Chapter 59

Amnon pushed the transport to its limits across the outskirts of the city, through the snaking neighborhood streets, all the way to the center of the plaza.  Every moment forward caused Katherine’s anxiety to increase.  The plume of smoke she saw when she exited the tunnel had divided several times as the city center drew closer.  She saw increased chaos and lawlessness.  She saw citizens, who normally shut themselves in their homes, wandered the streets, drawn like magnets to the smoke.  Several shops were vandalized, and the debris littered the streets.  The acrid smell of burning materials seeped into the transport, and again, Katherine placed her hand over her mouth and nose, knowing it wouldn’t help.

The wandering public thickened and clogged the main passageways into the city’s center.  Amnon pressed a sequence of buttons that lifted the transport above the crowd and allowed them to break into the plaza without getting mired in the zombie-like migration.  Amnon looked for a safe place to set the transport down, and the pair hopped out of the vehicle, alert to the vulnerability in the open air.

Katherine could not wrap her mind around what she saw when the plaza was finally laid out in front of her.  She had identified several blocks back that the main smoke plume came from Dol’s tower, but the smoke failed to tell a tenth of the story.  The top third of the tower was invisible, lost in a roiling black cloud fed by several other floors of orange-red flaming anger.  The brave soldiers at the tower’s base could only make feeble attempts to manage the fires as there didn’t seem to be sufficient extinguishing equipment.

Bits of the flaming building fell like giant sparks, landing on the neighboring buildings and streets.  Katherine assumed that was the cause of the many other nearby building fires that added to the doomsday atmosphere.  Several screens from the Department of Communications played an alert that Nova had finally been terminated.  Katherine watched as a blonde woman defiantly stood in front of the Central Processing Unit before being shot by soldiers and falling to the ground.  It took a few seconds for the images she saw to line up with reality.  The blonde woman was Keetha.  Keetha was Nova.  Keetha was dead.

Immediately, Katherine turned to Amnon, unsure if he’d seen the images.  The stone look on his face told her that not only had he seen the images but that he’d registered them faster than her.

“Keetha,” was all she could manage.

“It’s funny,” Amnon said.  Katherine wrinkled her brow.  “I thought I would die, not her.  She was so smart and careful.  Always seemed one step ahead.”  He placed his hands over his face for a moment.  Then he cleared his eyes and looked again at the looping images of the last time he would ever see his love.  Katherine knew she should say something.  It was impolite not to.  She would want someone to say something to her.  Still, there had been so much already that day that her mind was empty of comforting words.  The more she searched for the right things to say, any form of empathy, the further the words retreated.  

“I need to get you to the safe house,” Amnon said after a giant exhale.  “Whatever has happened, we are in a new phase of the plan, such as it is.”

Words.  Why could she not think of words?  She’d seen this in Evan many times.  Amnon was in the very male process of absorbing the evil events and not dealing with them.  If she didn’t say something, he might lock her out, too.  Still, no words would come.  Katherine bit the inside of her lip.

“She… died in front of the Unit, so let’s assume Evan and maybe Lillian made it that far.  Dol’s tower is on fire, and I don’t know what that means, but based on the mess out here, he’s not in charge.  I don’t think anyone is.  You need to get back to the safe house, and Drex can protect you.”

He was doing it.  He was shutting her out.  Why wouldn’t he let her help?

“What about you?  I can…” she started.

Amnon shook his head.  “No.  There’s a, there’s something I need to do.  A promise to keep.  You need to be in a place where Evan can find you in case he makes it out of there.”

“I don’t,” she began to panic, “I don’t… how will I…”

Amnon nodded and moved to the transport.  He began to mash on screens and buttons.  “I’ve told it where to take you.  You’ve seen me at the controls.  All you have to do is keep it from running into things, and you’ll be fine.  Assuming the safe house is still safe.”

“Don’t do this,” Katherine began to tear up.  “Don’t shut me out.  Everyone shuts me out.”

Amnon held her by her shoulders and focused his eyes on hers.  “I’m not shutting you out.  But you need to survive whatever this is.  If you are going to go back to your realm, if you want any hope of seeing your husband again, you need to go to the safe house.  I have a different obligation.  When I’m done, I’ll make my way to the safe house.  I don’t see a way to survive if we stay together.  You need to trust me.  We may be in different places, but we are still on the same team.”

She knew he was right, but it still didn’t feel right.

Just then, a searing whine grew overhead.  Katherine and Amnon looked to the skies, witnessing the start of the war.  The atmosphere above matched Dol’s billowing tower.  Katherine counted four giant spacecraft breaching the Merlain skies.  White smoke flowed over them as the friction in the atmosphere gave way to thier entry.

“They’re here,” Amnon said.  Katherine could not take her eyes off of what she was seeing.  It was like something from movies she saw as a child.  “You know what this means?” he continued.

“No.”

“They were successful.  Those are Coellum ships.  Evan took out the communication system.”  Amnon gritted his teeth and pounded a fist into his hand.  “We did it,” he whispered.  After another moment of watching the approaching Coellum ships, Amnon took Katherine by the arm and guided her to sit in the transport.  “You have to go.  You have to go and tell Drex.  He probably already know, but you have to get to the safe house as soon as possible.  I will tend to my thing, and then I will see you there.  We might just make it out of this.  This is a good day for Merlain.”  Amnon almost didn’t finish the last sentence as his throat closed in emotion and his face contorted in grief for Keetha.

Without another word, Amnon pressed a button on the control board, straightened up, and closed the transport door.  All the noise and chaos of the plaza muted, and Katherine watched Amnon run toward the prison building.  Then, without her assistance, the transport took off in a direction.  Katherine grabbed the steering control and jerked the vehicle this way to avoid gawking citizens and bulky debris.

As a new panic began in her chest, Katherine repeated Amnon’s words to her, “I’m not shutting you out.”  She didn’t believe it in her heart.  Amnon had just shut the transport door on her.  But she willed herself to believe him in her mind.  He had done everything he could to make her a part of the efforts, he’d saved her from the torture chamber, why would he shut her out now?

She repeated the phrase while guiding the transport to the safe house.  Would she ever see Amnon again?  Would Evan be waiting for her at the house?  Would the Coellum be the peaceful people Lillian had said?  These questions and more flowed like unobstructed water through her mind.  It was almost too much.  Katherine took a deep breath in her lungs, and let it out slowly.  She began to focus on the road ahead and what she would do when the transport stopped.