Sam #2
Sam sucks in her breath at the beauty of the undulating light, the way it thickens where the waves lap against the rocks and thins farther out to sea.
She isn’t ready for the feeling that hits her now, a pain so visceral and sharp that she can hardly catch her breath.
Her eyes go to the dark ocean and then to the night sky, as if performing such a ritual might make it possible for her to see her mother’s spirit.
Some final parting between the two of them.
She tries to hear her mother’s voice in the whistle of the wind.
If she lets herself be deluded into it, she can believe it, that there in the breeze is the thin sound of her breathing.
But she isn’t there. It’s all just a vast nothingness that surrounds her.
Sam sits on the rocks and stares for a long time, letting herself be lulled by the rocking of the waves.
What had her mother thought, when she first came here by ship so many years ago, an infant Sam snuggled to her chest?
Had she stared out at these same waters and looked for the outline of a new land, a place that would hold all the answers for her yearning soul?
Sam searches her vast memory bank for a hint of the open ocean, but if her mother had let her see it all those years ago, if she had held her up near the railing to look at the water, Sam can’t remember it.
Somehow, it is this unremembering that overwhelms Sam in the end, here where she finally feels everything build up and up in her chest until it crashes over.
Mama, she thinks, face contorting, tears spilling down her cheeks. Mama, Mama. I’m so sorry.
The ocean answers her weeping as it crashes against the stone arches.
“I’m so sorry, Sam,” Ari says gently.
She wipes the tears away, ashamed to let him see her weakness here. When he says her name again, she looks over to see him standing, holding a hand down to her. She realizes that she’s still clutching the glass blade, but he doesn’t bother looking at it.
It’s dangerous to touch a bioalchemist. The warning flashes in the back of her mind like a red light. Once he touches her, he can alter the chemicals in her body, could flood her with pain, could force her to go unconscious, could kill her.
But tonight, she doesn’t care. It’s all over, anyway. She stares at his hand, then up at his face. He looks somber, the anger having burned out in his eyes. He waits patiently.
She takes his hand. His palm is warm against hers. He pulls her to her feet and faces her, studies her gaze, then brings her close, wrapping his arms around her in a quiet embrace.
The solid warmth of his body breaks something in her.
She leans into him in exhaustion, wraps her arms around him and rests her head against his chest. At last, she lets herself drop the glass blade in her hand.
It splashes into the foam of the waves and shatters against the rocks.
Her eyes close. It is as if the ocean has quieted.
Their little world turns inward, silences, encasing them in their own shield.
As they hug, his hand turns slightly against the small of her back.
At first she stiffens, thinking he’s about to hurt her.
Then she feels a gentle wave of calm coursing through her veins, a steady stream of something that stills the anguish churning in her stomach.
Her muscles relax somewhat, and she takes a deep breath.
The calm steadies her against him, loosening the knot of pain in her chest and the unbearable grief blanketing her heart.
He pulls away slightly to look down at her.
His lashes are tinted silver by moonlight.
He lifts a hand and carefully traces a finger along her cheeks, transmuting away her tears, caressing her skin so that she feels the tension lift where he touches her.
He traces across her forehead and along the furrow between her brows, and where he goes, she relaxes, her body easing.
She knows that these transmutations hurt him, just as they hurt all alchemists, knows that he is giving himself pain in order to smooth hers away.
He presses a hand gently against her cheek, thumb brushing idly across her skin.
There, he stays. He is near enough now, his lips so close to hers that the smallest movement would turn into a kiss.
But he doesn’t. Instead, he closes his eyes and sighs, breath shallow.
After a while, she realizes that he is crying silently too, tears staining his cheeks.
His sadness is so complete that she can sense it through their touch.
They stay locked in this moment, calmness sweeping and ebbing through her like a tide. Her breathing comes evenly now, her eyes steady with his. Around her, the surface of the ocean still glimmers with blue light.
All she wants in this moment is to stay, to pretend like they are still children together, to pretend that it might be possible for them to linger on the shores of this other world.
“Sam,” he whispers. “Sam, listen to me.”
Sam pulls slightly away at his repetition of his earlier words. And this time, she sees the real reason behind his sadness, the truth of why he’s here. That, just like her, he hadn’t come alone.
That he is calming her senses right now so that she can focus.
At her silent look, he leans close to her ear. “Sam,” he murmurs, “don’t react yet. They’re here for you.”
A shiver runs through her limbs. So, Lumines had come too.
“I think we both know why we’re here, then,” she whispers back.
There is no surprise in his voice, only an unspeakable sadness. “Sam, I don’t want us to end like this.”
Movement ripples in the shadows behind Ari.
He gives her a knowing, stricken look. “Sam,” he whispers. “Run.”
And a young woman with short blonde hair materializes out of the darkness, her lethal gaze locked on Sam, a grim line on her lips, a gun in her hand. It’s pointed straight at Sam’s head.
A thousand emotions flash across Ari’s face. He seems to hover between two decisions, torn—and then he suddenly shoves her.
“Move!” he snaps.
The gun fires—Sam jerks backward and instinctively pulls all the air around her close, so fast that it forms a narrow curtain of wind.
But she’s not an elementalist, and can’t gather the air quickly enough—it manages to curve the bullet just enough to avoid a direct hit to her forehead, but it still grazes her temple. A searing pain cuts through her skin.
Sam throws herself to the rocky ground and immediately rolls deep into the shadows. Had Ari not shoved her, she would’ve been hit. She’d be dead right now.
“Ari!” the woman shouts, infuriated. And then she’s lunging at Sam again, gun drawn and eyes flashing. She shoots a second time.
But the element of surprise is gone—Sam presses her hand against the archway and yanks the stone out.
Rock cracks and roars and crumbles as she forms it into a slab of metal before her.
The bullet hits the metal sheet. On the other side, the girl sidesteps, narrowly avoiding the bullet ricocheting off the metal.
Sam turns wild eyes on Ari. He meets her gaze with his stricken one. Tonight is meant to be her assassination, Sam realizes with her heart in her throat.
She sprints out of the archway and into the moonlit sand. The girl—now Sam recognizes her from files they have on Lumines, a polemist named Isla—runs after her.
But right as she reaches the sand, she flinches backward. A column of sand shoots up around her, forming into glass. It shatters as bullets hit it from the cliffside. Sam looks over.
There she sees Will’s silhouette, flanked by two more polemists.
Ari rushes toward her. Now he’s noticed the Grand Central crewmen here too. He bares his teeth at Sam in a snarl of fear.
“Get out of here!” he shouts. “Follow the curve of the shore! Go!”
“Shakespeare!” Isla shouts at him. She rushes at Sam—another Lumines operative joins them. Sam is forced to back away from Ari as the two crewmen lunge at her. Isla slashes at her face with a blade, once, twice, almost landing true—
—but someone’s shooting from the cliff. Isla manages to dodge several hits before she suddenly winces and grips her temples.
When she opens her eyes again, she stares blankly out through her glasses as if she’s momentarily blind.
Her halting moment costs her—a bullet hits her in her upper arm.
She grunts, wincing, her attack thrown off.
Another bullet strikes her in the shoulder.
The second operative whirls on Sam.
But he only has time to lift his arm before Sebastian is on him.
The man brushes a hand against the sand and shoots a thousand needles of glass up from the ground.
The Lumines crewman shrieks as he’s impaled through every muscle of his body.
A burst of blood, a trembling body. Sebastian shatters the glass needles, and the crewman collapses dead at his feet.
Too much is happening now. There are crewmen shooting from the cliffs, crewmen fighting on the sand.
Sebastian reaches Ari. The man throws a blade of glass at him.
But Ari is fast—he ducks to the ground, sweeps both hands against the ocean’s edge, and splashes up a wall of seawater.
Acid. Some of it hits Sebastian and he yells in pain, but then he’s transforming it into water vapor, and it vanishes into smoke in the air.
Behind them, Isla is fighting heavily against three Grand Central crewmen. She manages to stab one clean through the shoulder, but then the other two are on her, taking her to the ground.
Ari shoots a wall of stone up from the sand.
But Sebastian runs at him and presses a hand against the stone.
It explodes into pieces. Sebastian bursts through and lunges at Ari with bright eyes, his inhuman smile wide on his face.
Ari swipes his hand across the remains of the wall and pulls a knife out of it, then stabs at Sebastian.
Sebastian dodges and grabs Ari’s wrist. Ari screams as the man melts the skin around his wrist and turns it into metal.
And then Will arrives down on the sand.
The instant he appears, Lumines crewmen start shouting for each other to get back, get away.
It’s Constantine! One of them is too close to Will to run.
He turns to attack Will, but Will just sweeps his hand impatiently through the air.
In the blink of an eye, the air transforms into a poisonous gas that surrounds the crewman—he shrieks as his skin blisters and falls to his knees with foam bubbling from his mouth.
Will continues on, his face dark with purpose.
A second Lumines crewman lunges at him, boots splashing into the surf. Will bends down and dips his hand into the water. In a flash, the waves all along the beach freeze solid, so fast that the crewman’s legs are trapped in the ice. He struggles for a second before Will reaches him.
Will touches the man’s forehead once. The man only has time to open his mouth in horror before Will freezes the water molecules in his body, causing every vein to burst in unison. The man’s skin turns crimson underneath. Frozen blood crystals spurt from his mouth. He collapses.
The other Lumines crewmen retreat, running up the sand.
“Take him alive!” Will shouts, eyes on Ari. “I want him alive!”
Ari looks around and finds Sam—but another Grand Central crewman grabs his free arm and twists it behind his back. Will reaches Ari, seizes his hair, and yanks it viciously back. Sam remembers in a flash the feeling of those curls through her own fingers, the tender way he had cupped her cheek.
It had all been lies. She feels like someone has melted her heart into steel. He had been sent here tonight to kill her.
And she had been sent here to capture him.
Ari winces at Will’s grip on his hair. Will leans close to him, his face the portrait of ice, until his lips are barely an inch away from Ari’s.
“Well,” he says. “Looks like Shakespeare’s at a loss for words.”
Ari meets Sam’s gaze one last time.
Then Will releases his hair and pulls a gag tight across Ari’s mouth. Another man throws a black bag over Ari’s head.
Sam can feel nothing. Her hands have turned numb.
Her arms and legs are numb. Her skin tingles, as if wanting to be cast away.
Everything looks like it’s moving slowly, sounds are muffled, screams are muted.
All she can picture, over and over again, is Ari standing before her, eyes gentle and overcome with grief.
Ari, whispering to her, I’m so sorry, Sam.
He was sorry for what he was about to do. Why he was here.
I’m sorry too, Ari, she thinks in anguish.
What a fool she was, to think that they could ever have a safe place, like they ever had a chance.
Love is like their lives, something they are helpless to control.
They live and die with the tide, pulled in and thrown back out again, slowly washed away into nothing. Perhaps they are doomed like this.
Forever sorry for what they will do to each other. Forever bound to do it again.