Chapter Seventeen #2
A circular platform rose from the smooth floor near where she stood, the air above the platform shimmering faintly, like a heat mirage or a veil of static.
Gemma flinched, a startled cry catching in her throat.
What in the blazes . . . ? When it ceased moving, she wiped her clammy hands on her trousers.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this.” She whimpered before stepping onto the platform.
Her senses tilted. Color collapsed. Light stretched then snapped. For a heartbeat, Gemma felt herself unravel—skin, breath, thought, self—then everything stitched together again.
Crimson sand swept in graceful arcs across a vast plain beneath a turquoise sky. Twin moons shimmered low on the horizon, and violet clouds rippled like banners through the atmosphere.
Reva.
Though, not as it was. Not as she remembered it. This Reva breathed with power, with memory. It pressed at the edges of her senses, quiet and vast. Like something ancient was watching, listening, waiting to be known.
Gemma took one cautious step forward, off the platform. The sand hissed underfoot. A figure waited in the distance, upright and unmoving, neither cloaked nor armed. Familiar yet impossible. She approached warily, her pulse thumping in her ears.
The figure turned—and Gemma’s breath fled.
It was her, but not. A version of the self she saw in her nightmares, yet entirely different. This version stood taller, straighter. Regal. Less shrouded in possibilities and secrets; more like she’d chosen her place.
Underneath a silky, violet gown, this Other-Gemma’s skin shimmered faintly with iridescence, like her cells had been threaded with starlight.
Her dark brown hair floated behind her as if gravity itself had lost its constraints.
And her eyes weren’t just violet but shimmered with every shade of purple in the galaxies—nebulae caught in motion.
A pulse of knowing hit Gemma square in the chest. This was her. A future her. What she could become.
“I’ve been waiting,” Other-Gemma said, her voice neither hostile nor warm. “You crossed the threshold and opened the tomb, proving yourself worthy of the gift we bestowed. So now you see.”
Gemma stared through watery eyes. “See what?” She feared she knew the answer.
Other-Gemma titled her head. “What you are.”
Her hands shook. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“You do. You just haven’t allowed yourself to believe it yet.”
The wind howled around them, lifting flecks of red sand into the air.
Gemma shook her head, stepping back. “I didn’t ask for this. I never wanted any of this.”
“And yet the orb chose you. It saw in you what it had been waiting centuries for. You offered kindness in a world of cruelty, mercy in a time of war. And when you were broken, you still chose to rise.”
Her voice broke. “I didn’t choose to be rewritten.”
Other-Gemma stepped forward. “You are not being rewritten. You are becoming.” The sky above darkened. Reminiscence flickered like lightning behind Other-Gemma’s eyes. “You are not the first to bear this gift. But you may be the first strong enough to hold it without failing.”
Images bloomed in the air around them—fractals of memory. Revarian warriors with eyes like hers. Shields of energy, temples of divinity, languages sung through breath and gesture. And death. So much death. Wielders who lost control. Eyes gone black. Whole cities consumed in storms of violet fire.
“The Revarians were created to protect, to heal, to guide,” Other-Gemma said, “but over time, the power twisted in those who craved control. And it consumed them.”
Gemma’s knees buckled.
Other-Gemma knelt beside her. “Those who still understood their gifts eliminated those who’d chosen domination over benevolence and then left this world, placing their powers—their resonance—inside orbs.
They spread these orbs across the galaxy, with strict instructions to unlock only for those deemed worthy.
“The one you found is just the first in thousands to be discovered. But you need not fear it, for the gifts you inherited amplify what already lives inside you.”
Gemma’s heart stuttered. The memories from Zion flashed like lightning. All that blood, all those bodies broken by her will alone.
“Then why did I like killing those people so much?” Her voice cracked. “I don’t want to become that.”
“You were angry. And it gave you the means to act on that anger. It doesn’t choose your path. It follows your intent.”
“I never intended to kill all those people.”
“You were protecting someone you loved in the midst of battle without having control over your gift. You need not feel guilty.”
Another tear dripped off Gemma’s chin. “But what if I lose control again?”
“You are afraid because you think the world is the cost.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Gemma’s gaze narrowed at the otherworldly version of herself.
Other-Gemma did not answer but simply stared, soft and understanding.
Gemma shook her head. “I just want to be me.”
Other-Gemma placed her hand on Gemma’s knee.
“Nothing you truly are can be taken from you. You are not the orb. You are not the Revarians. You are still human, still Gemma.” Her voice deepened, not in pitch but in weight, like it carried truths that bent gravity.
“But you carry something old now, something awake. It will never force you, but it will answer to you. Whatever you feed it—grief, fury, love—it will become.”
She shook her head again. “No. I don’t want this. I came here to find a cure.”
“There is no cure. Only choice.”
A tremor passed through the sand beneath them as glyphs bloomed behind her eyes, full of echoes and memories. A thousand lives she hadn’t lived, impressions she couldn’t name.
She tipped onto her haunches and crawled backward toward the platform that had brought her here, tears streaming down her face. “I don’t want this. Please, give it to someone else. Anyone else.”
Other-Gemma stood, an understanding sadness in her eyes. A blinding, violet light erupted from every line in Other-Gemma’s hand as she pointed it at Gemma. “I will see you soon.”
Gemma squeezed her eyes closed against the onslaught of radiance projected from Other-Gemma’s palm, and then the air around her grew familiar, damp, and cold. When the light faded and the cave reassembled around her, she sat exactly where she’d started.
She leapt onto her hands and knees seconds before her stomach released its contents. Gemma wrapped her arms around herself and sobbed. At last, she had the answer she was so desperate for, except it wasn’t the one she’d wanted to hear.
There was no cure.
She’d never be herself again.
The violet lights along the path blinked gently, urging her back the way she’d come, but she couldn’t convince herself to get onto her feet. Every lingering thread of hope had been burned away. Only dread remained.
Somehow, Gemma managed to make it back through the double doors, though she couldn’t remember taking a single step. Her entire body felt numb, every atom of her being spent to the point of dismal exhaustion.
Relief flashed across Gunner’s face the moment he spied her then quickly twisted into concern. “Are you okay?” He stepped forward, his gaze scanning her from head to toe. “What happened in there?”
Gemma blinked at him, unsure how to answer. Was she okay? Not at all. Was she permanently changed? Absolutely.
“I saw her,” she said softly. “The other me. Or . . . what I might become.”
The Kaizen listened with eyes sharp as razors. “And did it tell you how to stop what’s happening to you?”
Gemma shook her head and wiped a tear from her cheek. “No. There is no cure.”
Silence cracked through the corridor like a gunshot. Gunner’s shoulders tensed; the Kaizen’s jaw flexed.
“I give up.” Gemma’s voice cracked.
Gunner stepped forward, his brown eyes wild with deliberation. “Now, let’s not go that far yet. We’ll draw some labs, run another scan—”
“That’s not an option,” the Kaizen interrupted. Her gaze narrowed on Gemma, studying her the way a field medic might eye a failing heartbeat, wondering if it could be stabilized or if it was already too far gone. “Look at her arm.”
Gemma lifted it. A faint violet tattoo had spread beneath her skin from the tips of her fingers to her elbow, curling around her forearm in an intricate, veiny web. What the . . . ?
Gemma opened her mouth to offer an explanation, but she couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“Pheebs, she’s not a threat,” Gunner replied.
“The scientists on Mora didn’t think their alien relic was a threat either until it destabilized and vaporized them all.
You didn’t see the way Gemma slaughtered people when that side of her took over.
But I did. And if there’s no cure for her, then I have no choice but to take her into custody. Governor’s orders.”
“Please, Phoebe. Just let me run a few more tests.”
“No. She just walked through a gateway, made contact with something we don’t understand, and now her arm is practically glowing. I can’t keep her near civilians if we don’t know what she is.”
Silence permeated the air with the heavy weight of finality as Gunner’s shoulders drooped. Even if the Kaizen didn’t want to arrest Gemma, an order from Governor Gallowood couldn’t be ignored.
Gemma swallowed before answering. “It’s fine, Gunner. Hide me or lock me away—I don’t care. Just don’t let me hurt anyone else.”
An emotion close to respect crossed over the Kaizen’s face. She probably had expected Gemma to put up a fight. But the time for fighting was over. Gemma’s fate was sealed.
“Can I just make one last phone call to Christian?” she asked, her chin quivering.
The Kaizen sighed. “Fine. You can call him from the lab but make it quick. As soon as I inform the governor there’s no cure, I have to take you back to Zion.”
Gemma nodded and let Gunner lead her back to Doctor Manae’s laboratory while the Kaizen made the call to Governor Gallowood. The door to the lab hissed as Gunner exited, leaving Gemma alone in sterile silence.