The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (66 page)

Energy bloomed within Haven’s
chest—her own power, reaching out from far away to answer her rage.
Light blue flames flared up from Haven’s hand to meet the dark,
vibrant blue of Kamiko’s twisting fire snake. Haven pushed with
everything she had, forcing the stream of plasma out of her chest.
Her own energy flowed over the fire snake and crawled quickly
toward Kamiko, who pushed back even harder. Haven’s energy
flickered and died. She rolled out of the way and the fire snake
slammed into the ground where she had just been a second earlier.
Kamiko screamed in anger and lightning erupted from her back like
an insect sprouting enormous legs. They struck the floor next to
Haven as she dove out of the way.

She landed on her stomach and a bolt
of lightning stabbed into the small of her back. Her body was
paralyzed. A second later, the bolt disappeared. Haven rolled onto
her back and another bolt struck her in the stomach. Kamiko walked
toward her slowly, brushing black hair away from her
eyes.

“
You’re a lot more trouble
than the last girls,” she said.

A sphere of plasma surged down the
lightning bolt from Kamiko’s back and hit Haven in the stomach like
a cannonball. It pushed the wind out of her lungs and she lay on
the floor gasping for air.

Kamiko smiled and stood over her.
“Such a little bird,” she said, shaking her head in pity. “I will
send you to be with him. Isn’t that what you want?” She knelt and
put her hand over Haven’s forehead. The lightning bolt growing from
her back crackled in the air as it lifted away from Haven’s
stomach.

Warmth flooded out of Kamiko’s palm
and spread across Haven’s skull. She found it easy to lay there and
let it happen. It was almost peaceful. But then there was pain,
such as she had never felt before. The light from Kamiko’s palm
grew too bright and Haven closed her eyes, except the light did not
go away. She had a horrible vision of Colton’s face and his burnt
eye sockets.

Above the sizzling of her own bones,
Haven heard Kamiko laughing.

Then she heard something
else—a loud
CRACK
as the air in the room was forced apart. Kamiko stumbled
backward and Haven’s vision returned. Standing a few feet away,
looking down at Colton’s body, was a tall black man in a long green
coat.

“
It’s impossible,”
whispered Kamiko. She scrambled back, pushing herself away from the
intruder. “You’re supposed to be dead!”

He was tall and muscular. White scars
covered his bald scalp. A particularly vicious scar ran down the
left side of his face and crossed his left eye. The iris of that
eye was clouded white with blindness. The other carefully took in
his surroundings. His dark green trench coat had many pockets.
Beneath it he wore black pants and a black shirt. The muscles in
his jaw bulged visibly as he looked at Colton. Then he turned and
saw Kamiko.

She screeched and threw up her hands.
There was a tremendous surge of light from her palms. Haven and the
intruder looked away from the blinding pulse, and when it faded,
Kamiko was gone. Her footsteps receded quickly down the long
hallway that led outside.

The intruder looked after her
thoughtfully. Haven lay on the ground, breathing heavily. She
groaned as she sat up, keeping a wary eye on the man. He turned and
noticed her for the first time.

“
Who are you?” asked
Haven. He stepped toward her and she backed away. “Don’t come any
closer!”

He stopped. Haven had her closed fist
in the air, pointed at him in what she hoped was a threatening
gesture. He cocked his head as he looked at her, then in two long
strides, crossed the distance between them and grabbed her fist
with his own massive hand.

She tried to call upon her ability,
but she was empty inside. Not empty from lack of energy—it was in
there, somewhere. She could feel it swirling in the depths of her
soul, waiting to be called. She was empty for another reason. Her
eyes drifted slowly over to Colton’s body. It felt like someone had
carved out her insides and left nothing but her skin and
bones.

The man’s one good eye glinted with
understanding as he looked between Colton and Haven; the clouded
iris of his other regarded her without emotion. He squeezed her
fist and pulled her to her feet.

Haven started to protest but the man
reached out and grabbed her other hand before she could pull it
away. Suddenly she felt as if she were being ripped into a billion
tiny pieces. The floor dropped away beneath her feet and she was
suspended in space. The room exploded around her and swirled away
as if it were being sucked into a black hole. The universe blurred
out of existence. Haven was surrounded by an infinite void of
nothing. Her stomach dropped and she felt like she was going to
vomit. A distant noise—a scream of wind and metal—grew
louder.

The man held her close. A
tiny pinpoint of light appeared far away and approached quickly.
They were heading straight for it at an incredible speed, as if
they were standing on top of a bullet train in complete darkness.
The light grew and grew until Haven was sure they were going to
slam right into it—whatever
it
was.

Then it hit them. There
was a loud
CRACK
as the air ripped apart to make room for their arrival. Haven
was suddenly standing on firm ground. The man released her and she
collapsed. Her ribcage felt compressed and she couldn’t force air
into her lungs. The man slapped her on the back and she sucked in a
deep breath, then coughed and bent forward. Her coughing turned to
weeping as she thought about Colton.

Haven clawed at the grey dirt beneath
her hands. She wept and her whole body shook with her sobs. It took
her a moment to realize she was no longer in the black building.
She forced herself to calm down and sat up. Haven opened her hands
and soft grey dirt fell to the ground like sand from a broken
hourglass.

The man stood next to her, offering
his hand. Haven looked up at it hesitantly, then took it and stood.
She wiped away her tears with the back of her hands and looked
around.

They were standing in a wide field of
the grey dirt. The grains were so fine that small clouds lifted up
from their shoes whenever they took a step. At the edge of the dirt
lot, all around them, were the ruins of buildings.

Skyscrapers and parking garages—an
entire city had been destroyed. Haven looked up and saw a dirty
grey sky, much the same color as the dirt that covered the ground.
A hot wind howled throughout the buildings.

The man walked away and Haven hurried
to catch up.

“
Where are we?” she
asked.

“
Don’t you recognize it?”
His voice was deep and pleasant.

Haven looked at the broken buildings.
Rebar skeletons pierced chunks of charred concrete like shish
kebabs. “It—it looks like Chicago.”

“
It
was
Chicago.”

“
So…” she said, thinking.
“
When
are
we?”

A small smile crossed his lips. “Now
you have it.”

“
How is that possible?”
she asked. “I’ve never heard of anything like it, not even
rumors.”

“
I haven’t always known
the method,” he said. “I spent years probing the limits of my
capabilities. Life is energy, all the way down to the molecular
level. I thought that if I could manipulate something as pedestrian
as heat or light, why not reach farther? Why not try to manipulate
a section of space on the other side of the planet?”

“
Or in a different time,”
said Haven. He nodded.

She couldn’t tell where they were
going. The buildings surrounding them formed a barrier around the
dirt lot, and she didn’t exactly feel like climbing across the
ruins.

Haven studied him as they walked.
Somehow he looked young and old at the same time. His skin was
smooth and youthful except for the scars on his scalp, but his
eyes, even the left one with the scarred iris, were deep with
experience. A small gasp escaped her lips when she saw the tiny
black veins creeping up his neck from beneath the collar of his
jacket.

He smiled again. “Yes, I’m infected. A
parting gift from Alistair when last we met.”

Haven thought back to a conversation
with Bastian. “Australia. You were the one who fought
him.”

The man nodded. “Too much devastation
without any result. Alistair still lives. He was gravely wounded,
and I may have slowed him down, but he will return stronger than
ever.”

“
We have a cure,” said
Haven. “For Fade.”

The man shook his head slowly. “I have
accepted the inevitable.”

“
But—you’re a Nova!” she
said. “Aren’t you?”

“
Yes. Long thought dead by
my own kind.”

“
Why?”

“
Because I wished it. When
you have been around as long as I have, you start to see things
differently. You start to see the big picture.”

They walked for a moment in
silence.

“
What’s your name?” asked
Haven at last.

“
Nathaniel.”

“
You have a last
name?”

“
It was taken away by the
man who bought me.”

Haven looked at him. “How
old
are
you?”

“
Old enough to know that
people don’t change. Old enough to know that nothing we do makes
any difference.”

He led her to the base of a fallen
skyscraper. The building lay on its side, its top propped against
the building next to it so that it formed an enormous,
gently-ascending ramp. Nathaniel climbed over the rubble leading to
the flat side of the skyscraper. He reached back, offering his hand
to Haven, but she ignored him and climbed up on her own.

They walked up the steady slope on the
side of the skyscraper, heading slowly higher. Parts of the wall on
that side of the building had been torn away in large chunks, and
they had to be careful to avoid soft spots in the concrete as they
walked higher. Every window was shattered. Haven looked down into
the rooms as she walked past—nothing but ash within.

“
Why would you not take
the cure?” she asked.

Nathaniel walked a short ways in front
of her, studying the building before him carefully. “Look around
you. This is what happens to humanity in the future.”

“
How
far
into the future?”

“
My time here is
finished,” he said, ignoring her question. “There is nothing else I
can do to prevent what is happening.”

“
You can travel through
time and you’re pretty much a self-powered nuclear generator,” said
Haven irritably. “I think you might be selling yourself a little
short.”

“
I used to think so as
well. By the time I first learned how to use my abilities, a
century of persecution, torture, and murder had already passed. I
could do nothing to save my people from a lifetime of despair. Even
if I went back and changed everything, an equally devastating
scenario would arise. Believe me, I’ve tried. The hard truth is
that men like Alistair will always exist to inflict such pain on
the rest of the world.”

“
And people like us are
there to stop them,” said Haven. It felt good to say the words—to
know she served some purpose in the world. In the background of her
mind, Colton’s death tugged at her, begging her to break down and
cry. She forced the thought far away and choked back her
tears.

Nathaniel shook his head as they
climbed higher up the fallen building. They neared the top and the
air grew thinner, even though they were only two hundred feet off
the ground.

“
If you could take a step
back and observe things as I do,” said Nathaniel, “you would see
that Alistair and all the men like him are nothing but ants
fighting over a piece of grass.”

He reached the edge of the building
and stopped. Haven stood next to him, looking out upon a horizon of
destruction. The entire city of Chicago was laid to waste. As far
as the eye could see, there existed nothing but crumbled buildings
and piles of debris. The grey sky extended in all directions and
had no end.

“
Earth will eventually
tire of your presence,” said Nathaniel. “The skies will darken to
block out the sun. The oceans will rise to swallow half the planet.
Humanity will die.”

They stood there, looking out onto a
world of nothing.

“
Don’t you see?” he
asked.

Haven nodded. “I see,” she said. “I
see that you gave up, and you’re asking me to do the same thing.
But there are things worth fighting for that maybe you’ve
forgotten. Things like family and friendship.” Her eyes welled with
tears. “And love.”

He shook his head sadly.
“I have not forgotten them. Perhaps they have forgotten me. Do you
know what it’s like to be alone, Haven?
Truly
alone, with no hope of
salvation?”

She swallowed hard, thinking of her
parents and Colton. “I know enough.” She waited for him to speak,
but he remained silent. “Why did you really bring me
here?”