The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (25 page)

             
It seemed that every country had at least one group to represent it. Though conflict had emerged between allies and enemies alike in the years leading up to the event, we were all the same now. We wer
e all just a hodgepodge grab-bag of survivors, making our mad dash for a world where we would start anew.

             
We were never going to be able to come back. The grandiose escape was a plan thrown together in the space of a few weeks. The outcome of the momentou
s journey was less than hazy; it was inconceivable. Some would call the situation “life or death.” I only saw the latter.

             
“James...” I muttered but he was already standing in front of me. I reached out and grasped his arms to keep from collapsing. He held
the cup with the pill to my lips and I tilted my head back without a protest. A huge gulp of water sent it sliding painfully down my throat. I knew that soon the drug would begin to weigh down every part of me. I knew that soon I would be closing my eyes
for what very well could have been the last time...

             
“Oh, my God...” I put my face in my hands for a moment, feeling a fear beyond anything that I had ever experienced prior to that instance overtaking me. Sedation always brought forth the trembling, terri
fied child in me. I could not relinquish control ever, not even for a blissful, thoughtless sleep.

             
The world I had known was hours away from ceasing to exist. We were headed to a planet we knew next to nothing about where we would have to rebuild everythi
ng from the ground up in order to survive. As other people slept peacefully around me, their fears over the monumental journey and their guilt over leaving so many behind to perish held firmly at the corners of their dreaming minds, I felt every last excru
ciating bit of it all.

             
I believe that I should be excused for feeling such tumultuous emotions, given the circumstances.

             
I was aware that I was lying back on one of the cots. I felt James hand rubbing my arm gently as I snapped my eyes open every time th
ey betrayed me by shutting themselves.

             
“Everything is going to be okay.” James was telling me softly. “I promise you, we're all going to be okay. Just go to sleep, Brynna.”

             
“James...” I said again as the dark claws of that sleep sunk into my skin. I had
a second, maybe even less, to say what I needed to say. I felt sick as that pure terror began to calm into deathly silence like a beast shot clear through the heart.

             
“Just go to sleep, baby. Just close your eyes.”

             
With my last bit of strength, I managed
to murmur the words to him that were so very weak and
yet so very true, as well. There was no other reality besides those two excruciating words.

             
“I'm scared.”

             
He put his hand on my face and whispered the last sentiment I would hear before losing conscio
usness:

             
“I'll watch over you, Brynna.”

***

             
I was twirling through the endless starlit sky like a toy ballerina in a child's prized music box. In the distance, the moon shone as bright as a lighthouse's beacon leading ships mercifully to the steady land
from raging seas. I wanted to pull myself through space to reach it. I wanted to find salvation on its surface. But the stars around me faded as I tumbled forward, projected towards a hollow, menacing black hole where our earth once stood. The black hole h
ad consumed it, erasing it from view as though it had been a dubious mistake. Someone, more than likely our Creator, had furiously blotted out our precious Earth with permanent ink. And it
was
permanent, that absence, that blackness...

             
Or so I thought...

             
The next time I blinked, the planet had reformed before me in all its vivid brilliance. The blue oceans and the green lands were amplified ten-fold in my weary eyes. The sight took my breath away. I widened my eyes, my impulse to blink again becoming over
whelming. My eyes burned and tears streamed down my face from the effort it took to fight that basic reflex. But soon, the pain became unbearable and my eyes shut for but one millisecond.

             
When I could see again, the ambiance that I had only just seen had
vanished, replaced by a horror so lethal that I felt my heart begin to split. I wanted to reach up, grasp my chest, and through some miraculous cure, aid my heart's return to its normal two-step. But the sight before me was too harrowing. I was being eaten
alive by it from the inside out.

             
Fire had engulfed the world in several blasts. I could hear the screams of every last man, woman and child as they ran for cover, only to be consumed by that wave of flame I had seen so clearly myself. I could see every p
erson I ever knew, whether I had felt any semblance of affection for them or not, as they perished in the overwhelming blaze.

             
My mother did not even try to run. The flames had erupted and she had stood firm, awaiting the moment they blasted her from this
life to the next. I wanted to scream out to her but the pain in my chest had reached such an agonizing point that I found myself unable to draw the breath it would take to warn her.

             
For the first time, I was sorry that I left her. Tears of physical pain m
ixed with those of emotional torment fell as my arm jerked forward, reaching out to the image of her that was so clear, I thought I would be able to embrace her if I just strained myself to reach with enough effort and pain.

             
When the fire surrounded her a
nd burnt her right before my eyes, I finally did scream. I screamed until I felt the blood pushing against the skin of my face. I screamed at my mother with fury, guilt and sadness so strong, I knew that it would end me.

             
Over and over again in my mind, th
ese words repeated:

             
“She carried you.”

             
I screamed louder. The idea of it, though the thought seemed so obvious, jolted me out of my drugged sleep.

             
“It's okay. It's okay, Brynna. You're okay.” James was telling me. His hands were on my face as the scream
s continued to pour from me. Those panicked wails were the words I should have said to her. They were the protest that I never gave James when he told me I had to leave both of my parents behind. I could not form a coherent sentence. Only guttural, animal
shrieks could tell the world of my regret.

             
I allowed myself that moment. I allowed myself the vulnerability because I knew that I was safe there with James. I allowed myself to feel something other than the normal disdain I had for my parents.
I owed them
a moment of grief as their moment of death came and went.

             
An earthquake had ripped through my chest, pulling my heart in two separate directions with a canyon of space in between. My cries of torment choked off suddenly and I found myself unable to gathe
r breath sufficient enough to clear my clouded mind.

             
It was the drug they had given me. I was the one who was having the side-effects when I had been so worried about everyone else. I watched as James shouted to someone. Two men in white coats were beside
me and one was ripping my shirt down the front. Even with the unthinkably horrendous pain in my chest, I still found the strength to reach over and hit that doctor hard in the face. My body was going into the defense mode I knew all too well. Despite the
fact that a small part of me knew that those two men were going to save my life, I was still horrified to be in such a vulnerable state with them in the room.

             
“Everything's going to be okay.” James was telling me softly as he held the hand that I had used
to slap the poor doctor to his chest. When I went to strike out with the other, James grabbed that one, too.

             
“Look at me.” My eyes snapped over to his face and I was calmed by his soft brown eyes even though I could see the smallest traces of fear reflec
ted back at me in them. When he spoke, his voice was steady. In his firm show of calm, he was able to soothe me with an ease I didn't quite understand. “I'm not going to let anyone hurt you, Brynna. I promise.”

             
My hands tightened around his as I felt two
patches being secured to my chest.

             
I couldn't breathe. Everything was beginning to disappear in swirling clouds of black. Within those ominous clouds, I could see silver stars twinkling. They did not calm me; they terrified me because as they appeared, I
realized that I was falling back into space where I would relive that blood-chilling moment when the entire world I knew disappeared in a blaze that turned everyone and everything to ash. I couldn't see it again. I couldn't breathe.

             
Breathe in, breathe ou
t. Breathe in, breathe out.

             
“Let go!” One of the doctors shouted at James. I grasped his hands even more firmly and the doctor had to bark at him again before he finally wrenched them free.

             
When the jolt of electricity coursed through my body, I heard a
deafening bang that I was sure had shattered my eardrums. The ringing that followed the deafening sound was the same as the one I had heard just before the blast. I was still on Earth. I was going to drown in the wave of fire...

             
BANG.

             
It was the blast. W
hy wasn't I burning?

             
It hadn't hit me yet. It was coming.

             
BANG.

             
There was more than one explosion. The flames would surely come barreling towards me with a force that would rip what was left of the air from my lungs as I struggled to take one last, swee
t breath before I died...

             
Silence.

             
It was coming. It was coming.

             
“Brynna?”

             
So God really was a man. I wondered what my eternal punishment would be for living with such hate in my heart. The condescension was towards those I did not care to know. But th
e hate was towards the two people who had made me. Surely that was quite an offense, one worthy of a place in at least the first of the many fabled levels of hell.

             
“Brynna?!”

             
Why did God sound so frantic?

             
“Come back to me, baby.”

             
...Okay...

             
As my sens
es came back to me, I realized that I was not dead, nor was I being called “baby” by
an anxiety-ridden higher power. It was just an anxiety-ridden James Maxwell. My eyes opened and I found myself looking up into his worried face. I couldn't think of someth
ing witty to say that would assure him of my return to normalcy. I could barely process what had happened. My sarcastic nature and my intelligence that were the partners in crime behind such snidely clever remarks were put on the far back-burner under the
circumstances.

             
“You look horrible.” I managed to croak out as my hand came up to grasp my chest. There was very little pain there anymore. A few aftershocks rattled my bones but they were mere flies compared to the beastly creature that had been the actua
l heart attack.

             
James smiled slightly and tilted my head back. He poured some water down my throat and I managed to swallow it before I started to cough.

             
“Easy.” James said gently.

             
“What are you telling me 'easy' for? You're the one pouring it.”

             
“And s
he's back to normal in...” James looked up at what I guessed was a clock on the wall, “forty five seconds. That has to be a record.”

             
When I went to sit up and found myself unable, James eased me up himself.

             
“You wouldn't even know what to do with yoursel
f if I wasn't getting on you about something.” I managed to whisper before smiling at him just slightly.