Chapter Twenty-One #3
“Sorry,”
Caine said. “I don’t mean to go on like this. I had these—well, I had hundreds
of speeches. Every possible apology, every answer planned, right down to how
I’d stress the syllable. Then, of course, the second you actually walk in, I
just. . . .”
For a
moment, the cloud grew brighter.
“It’s
good to see you, Isaac. You don’t know. It’s been. . . .” The face inside began
to solidify. “You’re so big! A man grown already. You couldn’t have saved some
of that height for me to see, could you?”
Isaac
looked everywhere but the device in front of him—the torches, the dusty
windows, the half-finished experiments. There were words fighting to come out
of him, words that he had also tentatively planned to say, but none of them
felt right, and he wanted things to feel right, because, after all this time
and training and effort, things needed to be perfect.
But
none of this was perfect.
None of
this was right.
“Well,”
Caine said. “Let’s . . . move on, for the moment.”
Isaac
nodded, unable to look.
“What
happened out there?” The cloud seemed to spin, like liquid in a centrifuge.
Isaac realized his father was attempting to peek through a dusty window. “I had
to sever my senses to conserve energy. It seemed quite . . . apocalyptic, for a
time.”
“It’s
over,” Isaac said. “The power grid is destroyed, and all the souls are gone.
The colossus is in pieces. I’m not sure my anti-necrotics could destroy bones
of those size.”
“Berith?”
“He’s
dead.”
The
cloud shifted to the side, still trying to peer through the dusty windows. The
glass was a dull gray, letting in specks of light.
“When
he called,” Caine said, “I almost didn’t recognize his voice. He’d aged
terribly. Like a bitter old man. Even seeing his face was a shock. Did you see
the scars, where the necrotics had splashed?”
“The
years took a toll,” Isaac said.
“Oh, I
imagine. It’s a shame. He used to be almost as handsome as me, in a brooding
sort of way.” The cloud drifted back. “When we talked through the soul capture,
he told me exactly what had happened to you, and what he would do to me. The
way he talked about your training. . . .”
Isaac
didn’t answer.
“Well,”
Caine said. There was a shiver through the gas, like a cleared throat.
“Smashing the old metal is good enough. The Archons can’t resurrect the
colossus without a frankly eye-watering amount of energy, and, even if they
try, the Diet regulators will inevitably discover any attempts to mimic this
empire’s industrial capacity, or its source of transmutational energy. They
will demand the research halted. At least, that is what should happen. I am
getting the feeling that, up there, people no longer remember the Scorching as
well as they should.”
Isaac’s
knees were aching from kneeling at the dais. The pain from his wounds was still
clawing at his thoughts, scattering all the words.
“Isaac.”
He
watched the soul as it drifted to the front of the device, condensing into a
ball.
“See
that button down there? The big one?”
Isaac
looked at the large red button he had noticed earlier.
“It’s a
release catch,” Caine said. “It’ll drop the barrier. That’s the only thing
keeping me together. I’ll just . . . drift away. Nothing else.”
The
button was a large, chipped circle on the front of the cylinder. Around it, all
the gauges were still slowly drifting down. Some of the labels translated to
words like pressure, integrity, and reserve.
The
loss of power seemed to be accelerating.
“If you
want to,” Caine added. “If you want to ask me anything, go ahead. If you want
to . . . tell me anything, then feel free. Anything you want.”
“Are
you saying I should kill you?”
“I’m
only giving you the option.”
Isaac
began to gesture, but the sling stopped his arm. “What am I supposed to say?”
“That’s
up to you.”
“Are
you not even going to apologize?”
“Would
it make you feel better?”
Isaac
looked away, blinking until his vision was clear.
“If it
would,” Caine said, “then I’ll do it until the sun burns dry. I just . . .
didn’t think you’d want me to. This isn’t about me.”
“It’s
not about you?”
“It’s
not about what I want, is what I mean.”
“This is
about your wants. That is the entire reason I’m here.”
The cloud
rose above the device, the face inside climbing toward his eyes. Dust sparkled
through the gas.
“You
know,” Isaac said, “I never planned a speech. Mostly, I imagined you would be
talking, like you have been now. I never wanted to say anything, really.
I just wanted to hear you speak.”
He
paused, watching the accretion of dust.
“I was
afraid, walking in here. I was afraid that you would be like him. Like Berith.
Every time I’ve ever spoken, every time I’ve done anything that wasn’t an
order, I have been scared. Even now, you tell me I can say anything, and I
still don’t want to, just because I’m scared it’ll be wrong.”
He
shifted on his knees, wincing at his burned thigh. The pain made him clench his
fists.
“It’s
never been about what I want,” Isaac said. “Every moment of my life has been
about serving others, through training and chores and just nodding my head to
whatever I was told. It’s a foreign concept, even thinking of my own needs.
Every instinct screams at me to stop and turn and flee back to the safety of
obedience. And now you’re telling me that I’m free to do anything? You’re
telling me I can kill you if it’d make me feel better?”
Dust
curled in the air, smelling faintly of death.
“Do you
know what I want?” Isaac asked.
Caine
watched him, flowing and bright.
“I want
to leave. I want to turn and walk away and never think about this tomb again. I
want to see the places I’ve only known through books. I want to feel the
moments I’ve only seen in dreams. I want to wake up and walk outside and watch
the sunrise and not be terrified that I’ll be struck for doing so. I want—I
want—I—”
His
vision blurred, and he lowered his chin to his chest. In the moment, more than
anything, he hated that he was embarrassed to cry.
“I
don’t want to do this anymore.”
His
wounds still ached. His clothes were filthy, and his pack was heavy, and he
missed the softness of his bed, the warmth of a cooked meal, the feel of old,
musty paper on his fingertips. He missed the things that had always given him
comfort.
“Do you
know what I’ve wanted, Isaac?”
The
soul drifted forward, close to Isaac’s face. The ethereal light left spots in
his vision. For the first time, he noticed wisps leaking from the invisible
field around the device, as if holes were forming in the barrier.
“I
wanted to save myself,” Caine said. “I just pressed a button. I had journeyed
for days, I had watched several friends die around me, and I was walking around
this little shack, looking at all the trinkets and lab reports, and I pressed
that big button down there, just a quick little moment of curiosity, and it
destroyed my body. It took a second of carelessness, and I was trapped.”
The
soul split and rejoined.
“I
panicked. I think anyone would. It was weeks before the Diet tried to contact
me. I spent those weeks in the dark, alone and afraid, coming to terms with my
only choices. It was you or me. That was it. I had to put my soul in your body.
Kill my son to save myself. I was still struggling with it when they called,
and when they asked what could be done . . . I made my choice. I thought Sarah
might understand. I thought the Diet would acquiesce if I kept the obelisk
hostage. I had always drunk life to the lees, and that must have meant that I
wanted to live more than anything else.”
The
purple cloud began to spread. Light boiled inside.
“But
then I was alone, once again. For years, I was alone. It felt an eternity, here
in the dark, and I discovered that eternity is . . . quite a long time.
“I
practiced with the bones, I learned this city’s language, I explored every inch
where I could wriggle a finger.” A tendril of gas blew toward the lab
equipment. “I even attempted to replicate some of the sorceress’s experiments,
though I hardly understood the science. Whoever she was, she had a mind for
machines far exceeding my own. In any case, it still wasn’t enough. There is no
way to tell time in the dark. I couldn’t even sleep, Isaac. I have no
need for rest. In the end, thinking was the only way in which I could occupy
myself. And I did . . . quite a lot of it.”
The
cloud raced around its containment, roiling, shifting, stretching the vague
tendrils of a face.
“I
thought about you. I imagined how much you might resemble me, or, at least, the
handsome flesh I used to own. I pictured your first steps, your first spell. I calculated how much training you would have to do
before your body could be sent. Most of all, I thought about the Archons, all
the ways they would keep this a secret from the supranational regulators, all
the ways they could . . . bend and twist the deal, corrupting it for their own
ends. Slowly, I realized what I’d done. I realized what they would have to do
to Sarah. I realized what they would have to do to you, just so it would all
stay a secret. And I realized that my fate was likely sealed, no matter what.”
Below,
some of the gauges had reached zero. Lights were beginning to die.
“I
wanted to save you,” Caine said. “But there was nothing I could do. The Diet
did not contact me again, and the reach of this little box only went so far. As
you might imagine, there were few guests to the tomb surrounded by dragons and
pirates. My only hope—the only thing that kept me sane through the years—was
that, someday, you would arrive here, and I would get the chance to speak with
you, and I would tell you to run, to run very far away, to forget all about me
and to live your life on your own terms.”
Isaac
remembered the grinding voice of the bones, the insistence with which they had
spoken his name.
“After an
eternity, after all my hope had nearly bled away, I