Chapter 45 #2
I don’t make any attempt to quiet them.
It’s the sun. After twenty years without it. Twenty years in the dark. If they could run to it, I have no doubt that they would.
The sun rises higher, and streaks of gold burst across the ruined cobblestone. The shuffle of feet behind me grows louder, the rattle of chains echoing through the quiet dawn.
I hear prayers. Soft crying. More gasps.
The front line pushes forward, desperate to reach the border, and I keep just ahead of them. We pass through the shadow of the last row of buildings, and when the first Sol steps into bright, unfiltered sun, I can feel the relief in the relieved breath she exhales.
The woman tips her head back, spreading her arms as wide as her chains will allow, scrunching her eyes as she struggles to acclimate to the sudden brightness. Her lips part, her chin trembles, and then a glorious smile wrinkles her hollowed cheeks.
More have moved to stand beside her, lifting their faces east. Chests rise and fall with full breaths.
It’s a glorious scene. A mass resurrection.
Beings of light, nourishing themselves with the very thing they’ve been starved of.
Pulling that warmth straight into their veins, and bringing themselves back to life with it.
Reclaiming what belongs to them and taking the first step in what will be a long process of healing.
Nobody speaks. It doesn’t feel right to.
But I catch movement in my peripheral as Nix steps forward, weaving silently through the group. He reaches for the first chain he sees, wraps his fingers around it tightly, and pulls. Steam rises off the metal as he heats it, taking it to a temperature that allows him to bend the links.
After a few seconds, the chain falls to the ground, and a plume of dust rises around it.
The Sol he freed stretches his arms wider, and Nix moves on to the next.
More steam rises. Another chain hits the ground.
Devon and Pax join him, and I move to start on the front row, taking cold chains between my fingers and heating them until they’re malleable enough to break.
The marks left on their wrists don’t even seem to bother them all that much. Every Sol I come to is far too focused on the freedom it grants—spreading their arms as wide as they’re able.
For a while, the only sound is the periodic thud of metal hitting cobblestone. We move silently through the group, leaving warped chains in piles at their feet, and when I get to my father, I realize he’s removed his own.
Unlike the others, he isn’t basking in the heat. He’s frozen in place, spine rigid, facing the sun but not looking directly into it. He senses my approach, cracking open an eye and looking back at me for a moment.
There’s color to his skin that hadn’t been there when I first saw him, a slight Solian shimmer to his sharp cheeks. The grey in his eyes is halfway to burning silver, and even the peppered white in his dark hair glitters beneath the sun.
My father shuts his eyes again, exhaling a deep breath before confessing, “I sent her to you, you know? It was the only option we had. The only way we could guarantee she’d find the right people.”
I freeze in my approach, brows pulling together. “What are you talking about?”
He opens both of his eyes then, watching me as if he doesn’t quite believe in my confusion. But the longer I stare back at him, the more his expression softens, shifting into some emotion I can’t interpret. Guilt? Shame? Pity?
I don’t have time to figure it out as Devon’s sharp whistle cuts through the space. When I turn, I see the hand he holds up, gesturing towards the edge of the city.
“We’ve got to keep moving,” I tell my father, pausing on his blank face for a second longer. “We’ll talk about this later.”
Ignoring the nagging burn of curiosity in my chest, I move back to my place in the front of the group, and I’m kicking my way through discarded chains when it starts—the trembling of the ground.
Crumbled bits of stone vibrate with the rush of a charged…energy. Like an impending stampede.
Whirling around to face the group, the Sol snap out of their blissful states, clinging to each other with wide eyes. Pax is focused on me, Nix and Devon are searching for the origin of the sound, and my father—
His expression is grim, eyes locked on something behind us, and when I trace his gaze, my heart drops like another chain to the ground.
The Estate—a mammoth towering over the city, spires stretched to the clouds—is trembling. Its silhouette quakes in time with the rumble beneath our feet, and the grey light striking its eastern side dims.
The groan of the infrastructure booms through the mile of city between us. The sound reaches a precipice, and then…it stops. Heavy and still. As if it were a figment of all of our imaginations.
If there weren’t so many of us standing here, stunned, I might be inclined to believe it was.
Unable to move, anticipation charges the air, suffocating it of all oxygen.
One moment, the Estate is dark. The windows are empty. And then, with a rupture that rattles the city, the Estate windows shatter, and a blinding white light bursts from inside it.
It explodes across the city, beaming onto every crumbled building and side street, so bright I have to squint against it.
It’s as if…as if the Estate walls have swallowed the sun.
Stumbling back a step, I snap back into my body with brutal force.
“Go!” I scream, urging the Sol forward, to the edge of the city and the bunker beyond. “GO!” I shout again, and Devon and Nix spring into action, corralling the Sol from behind while Pax pushes his side forward.
The Sol move with urgency, the energy they were able to take from the sun making their movements stronger. It gives me more hope that they’ll make the trek back to the Banyan, but we have to get them to Hunter and Easton as soon as possible.
Chaos ensues around me, Sol after Sol rushing past, and all I can do is stare back at the Estate. The building is still shining. Still bursting with light—more sun than Streatham has seen in years.
“Cal!” Pax appears beside me, pulling me from my trance. “Let’s go.”
I resume ushering people out of the city, helping them over the shallow hill to the bunker, relieved beyond belief when Easton and Hunter are waiting exactly where I’d left them.
When we crest the hill, they don’t have much time to be shocked before they have to jump into action, sensing the urgency in how fast we move. They surge forward to meet the Sol, helping where they can.
“Devon!” I bark, and he whips around to face me. “You and Nix go with them.”
His response is a quick nod, and then he turns, whistling to Phoenix, who has anticipated the order and is already at the back of the group, urging the Sol to stay close together.
My father moves beside Pax, the latter watching me and the former darting his attention from us to the group moving south.
“Go with them,” I tell my dad, nodding in their direction, but there’s clear defiance on his face, so I look to Pax instead. “Walk him back. I’ll wait for Cin.”
“We’ll wait with you,” Grey offers, glancing to Pax for backup.
Something flashes in my peripheral, and I whirl around in time to catch that blinding light fade from the Estate, leaving it a haunted, dreary grey once more.
It sits like an empty husk up on that hill. Lifeless and empty.
Pax appears at my side, my father steps in on my right, and then we wait.
In this moment of being still, exhaustion begins to wear on me, warping my reality. I stare so long at the horizon that I start mistaking the speck of distant buildings for Cin. For her silhouette. I squint so hard my eyes begin to burn from the effort, and the silence around us presses in.