Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle #1)(116)

… No.

NO.

?????

I’m nothing.

I’m everything.

I’m we.

But though it’s inside me now

hopelessly intertwined with almost everything I was there’s still a tiny ember in a darkened corner that’s

still

me.

I’m back in the flight simulator at the academy. The day I graduated into the Ace stream. Reaching out into the network all around me, moving faster than they can target me. I can hear the voices of the other cadets in my head. The cheers growing louder as my kill tally mounts, weaving through the mossy hands that clutch and grasp me, trying to hold me back.

I take hold of it. Squeezing tight. Holding all of it—Princeps, the other agent, the chimps, the colonists, the tendrils, all of them still. There’s so many of them. It’s so big. So much. So heavy.

And I look around at them, through the eyes I know will only be mine for a few moments longer before my ember goes out forever.

These people who were my family. These people who were my friends. Sharp Auri and quiet Zila and snarky Fin and brooding Kal and smooth Scarlett and my beautiful, sad Tyler. I hold out one trembling hand to them.

I can feel the darkness closing in around me. Set to swallow me whole. And I remember Admiral Adams in his farewell, looking directly at me as he spoke the academy motto, those words and that memory now blinding in my mind.

We the Legion We the light Burning bright against the night “You cannot fight us, Cat.”

Watch me.

“You cannot stop us forever.”

I don’t need to.

“We are legion.”

So

am

I

I reach out through the network. The tendrils of energy connecting all of it. All of us. Turning the strength of the many back upon itself. I just need to buy them time. Time to run, get out, get away. Time to get the hells off this infected rock, to regroup, to recognize what Auri actually is and what she’s supposed to do.

This defeat is a victory.

I can feel her in my mind. Reaching out into me, radiant midnight blue, flaring bright against our burning blue green.

I can’t hold them for long, O’Malley. …

“Cat, I …”

GO!

Princeps and the others tremble in place. Struggling against the tiny army of me. Aurora can feel them, crashing against me, wave after suffocating wave. She knows better than all the others—that there’s nothing that can be done. And so she turns to Tyler, who’s still staring at me in horror.

“Tyler, we have to go,” she says.

He blinks at her, understanding her meaning.

Tyler, we have to leave her.

I reach into the muscle that was me. Feel the tears welling in my new blue eyes as I force the lungs to move, the mouth to speak.

“I told you, Ty,” I whisper. “You have to let me go.”

“Cat, no.”

“Please …”

I can feel them. All of them. These people who were my family. These people who were my friends. They’re members of the Aurora Legion, and they don’t leave their people behind. But each of them knows, in their own way, that I won’t be people for very much longer.

I feel it slipping. I lose my grip. The undergrowth, Princeps, the colonists surge forward and Aurora throws up her hands, a sphere of pure telekinetic force keeping the flood in check. I can’t hold them back anymore. I can only hold on to this tiny fragment of me—this last tiny island in a sea of warm, sweet darkness.

I don’t want to leave them. But looking into the Ra’haam—all it is and can become—I realize with a tiny spark of horror that I don’t want to leave it, either.

I look at Tyler. The scar I gave him when we were kids. The tears in his eyes. And I see it. Here at the end. Shining bright against this night.

“Cat … ,” he whispers. “I …”

“I know,” I breathe.

I shiver.

Feeling it close in around me.

“Go,” I beg. “While you still can.”

They run. Limping. Sobbing. Finian clutching the core fuel he synthesized, Kal and Zila supporting his weight. Scarlett, arm in arm with her twin, understanding maybe better than he does. Aurora leads them toward the GIA shuttle, arms flung up, a bubble of telekinetic force pushing back the rippling tendrils, the grasping hands, the all of us set to swallow the six of them.

I follow them at distance. Walking through the seething, clawing, biting growths, the wreckage of the broken reactor, the ruins of this broken colony. A blue wind kisses my skin. I can feel it working its way inward now, encroaching on the tiny spark. The last ember. All that remains of me.

I feel its power.

I feel its warmth.

I feel its welcome.

I take off my helmet.

And I’m nineteen and a million years old and standing in a sea of rippling blue-green as the people who were my friends bundle inside that little ship. And I can feel the spores dancing in the air around me and bubbling under the mantle beneath me and all the knowledge in the singularity waiting to embrace me. I’m a million light-years from where I was born and yet I’m right at home. And I’m exhilarated and I’m terrified and I’m laughing and I’m screaming and I’m everything and I’m nothing and I’m Cat and I’m Ra’haam and as the Longbow door cycles closed, as I look on them with eyes that are still mine for the very last time, I see him turn and look back at me.