Valley of Fires: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series) (19 page)

Who
was
she?

“Don’t come any closer!” Zoey yelled and took a step toward the edge, the energy from the huge column still bending closer.

“Zoey,” the woman said. “I know you’re scared, and that none of this makes sense, but right now, back here, with me, is the only place that’s safe for you.”

“You look like my mom,” Zoey said. “But that can’t be.”

“Will you come back to our room so I can explain?”

“No.”

The woman’s desperation was building, and Zoey felt her latch onto an idea, one she found unpleasant, but she did it anyway. The woman’s feelings turned inward, searching through the memories she held like a librarian flipping through a catalog, looking for something, finding it. “When you were very little, there was a song you loved. You sang it a dozen times a day, do you remember?”

Zoey steeled herself. This woman, whoever she was, was
not
her mother. She looked around again, trying to find an avenue of escape … then pure music filled her senses and overrode everything else.

It was a song, one she barely remembered. A simple melody, but it stirred great things in her.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine …

Zoey looked back at the woman, locking eyes. Images flashed in her mind: this woman, and another, very similar in appearance, both beautiful and close, singing with her.

You make me happy when skies are gray …

The song lasted a few seconds more, its melody flowing through her head until it dissolved away and was lost. Zoey shuddered, trying to hold on to the memories, but they slipped away like water through her fingers.

“How did that feel, Zoey?” the woman asked.

Zoey didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure how to.

“I’ll make you a deal. Come back with me and let me explain, and if you still want to, you can leave. Or you can choose to stay, and I can free more memories. Many more. You can finally, once and for all, learn the truth. Of your destiny, of who you really are … and how very loved you are here.”

Zoey looked back to the drop below, and the giant column of energy, still bending closer and closer, almost there. She could feel the heat from it now …

The woman offered her hand. “All you have to do is listen. That’s not so bad, is it?”

There was still a residual feeling from the memories, a shuddering of warmth. She’d had no idea they would have that kind of effect, and she’d had no idea how badly she wanted to feel them again. Besides, the woman was offering exactly what Zoey had come here for. Answers.

Slowly, cautiously, she moved forward and took the pretty woman’s hand.

*   *   *

ZOEY LOOKED AT THE
food that was still on the table, but she made no move to take it.

“You still haven’t eaten,” the woman said. “You must eat to remain healthy. Please.” She motioned toward the tray. The emotions Zoey had felt from the woman were gone now. She wasn’t exactly blank, but there was something …
off
about her.

“If I answer your questions, will you eat?” the woman asked.

Zoey said nothing, but in her mind she saw that as a fair compromise. The woman must have felt the decision, for she smiled a little.

“Ask,” she said.

“How did you do that before?” Zoey asked. “Unlock my memories?”

“They’re my memories too.” The moment the woman said the words, she flinched as if she had misspoken. “No … I mean, they were
hers.
”

The woman seemed confused, a little apprehensive, but it only lasted a second.

“You’re not her,” Zoey said. “My mother was with me when the Strange Lands formed, the Oracle showed me. The Severed Tower said I was the only ‘remainder,’ the only person not wiped away.”

“I never said I was your mother, Zoey.”

Zoey hesitated. “But…”

“Everyone always told them they looked so much alike. They told them they could have been…” The woman stopped, struggling for a word.

“Twins,” Zoey finished for her, coming to understand.

The woman nodded, and her voice had a slightly haunted edge to it now. Zoey could sense more emotion trying to push through. “Your mother was younger than me—
this form
by a year. You used to visit, this very city. Do you remember?”

Zoey shook her head. The woman closed her eyes.

Images burst to life in Zoey’s mind. Two women. One the Oracle had shown her, the other was the woman here now, and she looked almost identical to the first. They walked with Zoey between them, each holding one of her hands, lifting her up into the air, skipping her along the sand, and she giggled with each jerking movement. They loved her. She loved them.

The memories cut off. Zoey opened her eyes.

“You’re … Rose…” She said. “I called you Aunt Rose.”

“Rosalind was her real name,” the woman responded.

“You were my mom’s sister.”

“Yes…” she began, and quickly cut off. Zoey felt her push more feelings down. “Or … no … Not me, but … It is strange. It is … not as expected.”

“You’re one of
them.
Aren’t you? You’re the shape that buried itself inside her, the one I helped. You’re the one talking … not her.”

“Finding this form among the multitude was fortuitous,” Rose said. “She had been a medical professional, and that was the group we focused on for your Custodian. We ran basic scans on each of the Hosts in our possession, and to our surprise, her DNA matched with yours. It is then we knew.”

“How to get me to do it,” Zoey said. “How to get me to help one of you take over one of them.”

“It was a … consideration, but more so, we hoped it would put you at ease, the sight of someone familiar.”

“But you’re not her. Not really…”

“I am much more than that now, Zoey. As are you.”

“The Feelings,” she said, though she already knew. A part of her had known from the very beginning. “The Feelings are … one of you. One of you is
inside
me.” She remembered the vision the Oracle had shown her, that horrible, black room where everything moved up and down, not left and right, and the blue and white glowing crystalline shape that buried itself into her … just like the one who had buried itself into the body of her aunt.

“The Feelings, as you call them,” Rose told her, “are the remnant of the Mas’Shinra Royal who merged with you.”

“But … the Feelings have always
helped
me.”

“Why would they not? They are not your enemy, none of us are, far from it. They want what we all want.”

Many things were suddenly making sense. “That’s why I can control machines. Because of the Feelings. It’s the Assembly’s ability, not mine.”

“It is the Feelings’
ability,
but
you
are the one who channels it. Just as you channel its ability to read and sense others’ emotions and memories. Only your rebirth through the Severed Tower makes this possible. You are unique in all the universe, Zoey. You are the future. Of the Assembly. Of humanity. They will both be ascended through you.” Another glimmer of emotion. The concept seemed to both thrill and frighten the woman who was, and was not, Rose.

Zoey barely noticed. “Why do this? Why aren’t your own bodies enough?”

“That is … a complicated question. I can show you. If you want. But … there is a price.”

Zoey stared at her, unsure.

“You must eat something first,” Rose clarified.

Zoey thought about it. How did it further her goals to starve to death? Besides, she might get real answers to her questions. All the same, she reminded herself, the thing in front of her was
not
Aunt Rose.

Zoey took a muffin and gingerly ate a bite. It was carrot cake, and somehow, it tasted freshly baked. The flavors exploded in her mouth, her stomach growled louder. She wasn’t sure if the muffin was just that good, or if it was because she hadn’t eaten in so long, but it tasted better than anything she had eaten in forever.

She sighed in approval, forgetting her desire to resist the Assembly, her hunger taking over. Zoey finished the muffin in two bites and looked back at the woman.

Rose nodded in approval … then closed her eyes. Imagery and sound took over all Zoey’s senses at once.

“We were born of the Nexus,” Rose’s voice said inside her head. “And it was beautiful.”

There was nothing but light and color, and Zoey could see it was its own structure, a giant, floating field of energy surrounded by stars. Golden, glowing crystalline shapes merged in and out of it, as if swimming through its warmth. Zoey had, of course, seen those shapes before, and she had seen the field too. It was the same energy that formed the column in the center of the Citadel.

“A place of color and of warmth, but we were tethered to it. Trapped. As we evolved individually, our minds stayed connected. We exist in the Whole, a mass of each’s intelligence and purpose, united by the energy of the Nexus. We feel each other’s thoughts and emotions whether we want to or not. The Nexus sustains us, gives power and life, but we could never leave it, we would die without it. Can you imagine a more torturous existence? Trapped in all that cold blackness, self-aware, connected … but alone.”

Strangely, Zoey could. For all the beauty of the Nexus, the entities in this vision really were trapped, adrift in the deep of space, without a future, without anything other than themselves, forever and ever.

“After eons,” Rose said, her voice low. “We were saved.”

Objects appeared in the distance, a dozen of them or more. Even this far away, Zoey could tell what they must be. Ships. Headed toward the Nexus.

“Explorers? Conquerors? All that matters is that they saw us. They were captivated by our beauty, for we are radiant. They could not help themselves, they came closer, and we learned that day we were not as helpless as we believed. We could enter machines, disperse our essence into technology itself, power and control it. It was in this way that we were freed.”

An unpleasant question occurred to Zoey. “What happened to them? The ones on the ships?”

“We inhabited their technology. Certain systems were deemed unnecessary. Without them the biologicals could not survive.”

“You killed them…” Zoey said in horror.

“They were weak. Such is the way of the universe. We powered in the direction they had come, hoping to find their home world. In time, we did. And more. Many more. The pattern was repeated. We added to our technology, growing, controlling everything through our own energy, and leaving nothing behind, assimilating new colors into the Whole.”

It was horrible. Even Ambassador, for all it had done for her, was one of
them.
It had participated in a swath of destruction and death that stretched back who knew how long. It made her sick.

Rose seemed to sense Zoey’s feelings. “It was necessary. Even now, we remember how it once was, being alone, tethered, adrift, and lost. We swore it would never happen again, and a plan formed, one approved by the Whole, a decision that set in motion a quest that has, so far, lasted hundreds of thousands of years and seen countless races put to the Criterion.”

The Criterion was what the green and orange Royal had called the test the captured human population was given. “What were you looking for?”

“
You,
Zoey.”

The answer, for all its implications, was stated so plainly that it took a moment to feel the full weight of it.

“We have searched a millennia for an organic species that could contain our essence in the same way as a machine. No being has ever passed the Criterion. Until you. We have a name for the first, a herald of the coming Change.”

“Scion…” Zoey said, her voice a whisper.

“You are the key to a great search. We will fight and die for you, and the clan that claims you will become dominant, superior to all others. Look.”

The imagery flashed away. Her head swam from the abrupt shift back to the black room with its mismatched furniture.

Rose waved a hand toward one of the exterior walls, and as she did the color of it, the blackness, simply vanished. The walls were still there, they had just become transparent, making one giant window.

A giant panorama of city ruins stretched out before Zoey. She was looking due west, and the sun had just begun to set, burying itself in a perfectly straight horizon. It was the ocean, Zoey saw, and she could see where the land ended and the water began. The sky was full of color, oranges and reds, and somehow, it made the ruined city of San Francisco seem almost tranquil.

Buildings were shattered, fallen in on themselves, the patchwork of streets looked like a spiderweb from this height, and what was left of a once giant bridge spanned a gap in the landscape to the north. For all the destruction, though, the city was not dead. There was movement, like ants swarming in a nest.

Thousands upon thousands of machines moved in the streets and drifted in the air, and whatever force blocked Zoey from feeling and sensing them was suddenly removed. The impact of all those presences was overwhelming, but as she pushed the wave back, one thing became clear: the combined presence below did not represent only the Mas’Shinra, the blue and whites. They were there, she could feel them, but there were many more.

Every clan, all eight of them, from all over the world. They had sent representatives, not for conflict, but to unite. With all their aggression, it would take something remarkable to bring them together. There was only one thing it could be.

“Yes,” Rose said, looking down upon the multitude. “They are here because of you, Zoey. You will ascend them all, human and Assembly. You will be their queen.”

Zoey swallowed and looked up at the woman who had once been her aunt. “How?”

“With the Tone. It is broadcast from each Citadel on each continent, and it reaches the minds of every human on this planet, whether Succumbed or not. You have the power to use it. To transfer every entity from the Nexus into a human host using the Tone. We will be physical and real, and never again fear being trapped.”

Zoey shook her head, the horror filling her. “The humans don’t want that. They don’t want to be you, they want to be
them
. They’ll fight you…”