The Other Side of Life (Book #1, Cyberpunk Elven Trilogy) (29 page)

“
It’s better this way,”
Julius said in a deathly whisper. “I don’t deserve to be here.”
Then he looked deep into her eyes, with an intensity Leticia had
never seen before. It was a soft, tender look, with a touch of
genuine humility. “Remember me this way.”

He let his hand slip out of hers. In that
instant, Leticia saw Julius’s body and soul transpire into the
golden Zodiac symbol. Then the whole ground seemed to reverberate.
A single, blinding beacon of light shone from Bloodstar, in a
column toward the heavens, then in an all-surrounding halo. Anya
and Leticia both held out their arms to shield their eyes from the
brightness. With a final blinding flash of light, the Zodiac symbol
was covered forever more.

The strong winds began to lose their power.
A soft, rain-watery aura of white gold hovered above Tavia and
Dresan…and then above Nin, Anya, and Leticia. Anya thought she
heard a choir of angels, singing in a language she didn’t know, but
which cleansed her soul.

Everything settled. Calm was restored.

Anya took a long, deep breath of the fresh,
purified air. She was filled with awe, when she saw the renewed
Bloodstar in all its splendor. The gaping hollow, which had eaten
away half of the Tree’s roots, was completely covered with fresh
earth.

“
Anya,” a voice called out
to her.

It was a voice she knew well—Nin’s voice.
But he lay as lifeless as before, unmoving and still, in her
arms.

“
Anya…” The voice came from
afar.

Anya looked up, and saw Nin. His body—his
spirit’s body—was radiant, and he was smiling his familiar, patient
smile. “We did it, Anya. You did it.”

“
Nin?” Anya’s voice was
shaking, sounding like it was going to crack. She felt like her
whole world was spinning out of control. “What’s
happening?”

Anya felt a sudden gust of wind blow past
her. When she looked down, all that was left in her hands was Nin’s
crystal pendant.

“
Don’t worry, Anya.
Everything will be all right.”

“
Are you alive? Where are
you?” Anya asked in bewilderment, looking at Nin, while looking for
him, at the same time. His tattoo had taken on the same crystal
light glow, like the halo which surrounded Bloodstar, a few moments
ago.

“
I’m on the other side,”
Nin said simply, in a bittersweet kind of way, recalling the first
time he’d made a short mention of it at Helli’sandur, never
thinking he’d…

“
What other
side?”

“
Na’urtha
—the other side of life.”
Nin’s face was composed. His eyes gleamed with a curious mix of
angst, aching sadness, and deep insight and wisdom. He looked away,
avoiding the disillusionment and frustration in the eyes of those
he was leaving behind. “I finally understand it all now. Elvenhuman
blood didn’t only mean the blood in the vials—it required a
selfless act from a human and an elf to make it complete. When
Julius sacrificed himself, so Leticia would live…that fulfilled the
promise in the parchment.”

Leticia gasped. “He did that…for me?” The
pain in her heart was more than the pain she’d ever felt in her
entire life. She started to sob, uncontrollably, recalling Julius’s
last words to her.

“
You should be happy for
him,” Nin said gently. “Now, he will be at peace.”

Tavia said pensively, “Perhaps Julius is
also on the other side of human life…”

“
But what about Nin? What
does it mean to be on the other side?” Anya asked one more time,
first looking at Tavia and then back at Nin.

Nin’s eyes showed a glint
of anguish.
Neglect not, the other side of
life,
he said to himself, the last line of
the poem. He looked down, wondering what to say, and said nothing
to Anya. More words would only lead to more pain.

Anya didn’t even know what or how she should
feel. She felt as if Nin had departed from life all over again.

By now, Dresan and Tavia were standing by
Anya. Tavia put her arm around Anya’s shoulder, a gesture that was
well-intentioned, but offered minimal comfort.

“
Na’urtha
is where the most blessed of Elves go,” she let
Anya know. “It’s where ‘the chosen dead’ go. It’s where the soul
knows no boundaries.”

Tavia stood her ground, facing Nin with a
tight, terse smile, longing to hold Nin in a tight embrace. Her
Elven cousin was so near, yet so far—abandoning the mission had not
been an option, and they now had to go their separate ways. Dresan
kept his stoic, silent stance, even though silent tears were
building up and tearing him up inside. They were going to miss Nin,
terribly. He was no longer on the same physical plane as they were,
and they were powerless to turn back the hands of time.

“
You never said much
about
Na’urtha
,”
Anya said softly.

Nin wondered if he should have, at
Helli’sandur. But it wouldn’t have made any difference. He had
given his life for another, and this was the consequence.

“
Everything will be all
right,” Nin repeated. Tenderly, he said to Anya, “Take my pendant
and keep it with you. I will always be with you. I will look over
you and keep you safe.”

“
But…I don’t want to be
safe,” Anya said in despair. “I want you back here…with me. There
must be a way—there must be something we can do!”

Tavia tightened her hold on Anya’s shoulder.
Anya could say no more.

“
Go now,” Nin said gently.
“Dresan and Tavia will help you find your way back. Remember, I am
with you—always.”

With that, he was gone.

Fighting back tears, Anya started to follow
the others who had already started to make their way out of the
compound. No one spoke.

Anya felt she was still standing in the
light of his halo.

“
Anya…”

She felt a light wisp of air against her
neck, and saw a faint glimmer of Nin’s soulful form. She put her
hand out to take the mini thumbdrive he passed to her from his
N-Gage device.

“
It’s yours to
keep.”

Anya turned, and let the tears fall, when
Nin left her with a light kiss on the side of her face.

Anya, Leticia, Dresan, and Tavia took the
train back to The Velvet Underground. Everyone was still quiet.
They just sat, each one occupied in his or her own thoughts, not
wanting to believe there was one less in their midst.

Anya placed the blue box containing the
remaining vials on the table. She was overwhelmed with guilt. She
felt responsible for Nin’s death, and couldn’t understand why it
had to be this way. They had been a team all along—it was just so
wrong for Nin to end up having to face such an outcome, by himself.
She couldn’t look at Tavia and Dresan, whose eyes were pained with
the loss of their leader and comrade.

Tavia and Dresan bit on their lower lip,
keeping their gaze down. They knew they couldn’t fault Anya or
Leticia—if it weren’t for the girls, they’d never have uncovered
Julius’s plans. But maybe Nin wouldn’t be dead.

There was not a breath of a sound, and no
sign of movement either, from anyone. Anya was the first to break
the silence.

“
Nin wouldn’t want it to be
this way,” she whispered, feeling a sharp pang in her heart, when
she said his name.

None of it made any sense. What point was
there in saving the universe, if the people she cared about weren’t
there to share the new world with her? Why should a good person
have to die in order to bring salvation to the rest? It filled Anya
with a furious embitterment she had never harbored before. Now, she
realized how relatively smooth-going her life had always been, up
to this fateful day.

Anya ran a hand over one of the vials,
before turning to Leticia. “Do you know whose blood made up the
elixir?” she asked.

Leticia stared back. “The human and Elven
blood, in the one…” She couldn’t bring herself to say Julius’s
name. She felt sick to the bone. She was aware of the elves’
underlying tension and emptiness. Would Tavia and Dresan turn on
them now, for what happened to Nin?

Anya nodded, already tasting the
incongruousness of her question. Whose blood formed the elixir made
no difference as to the sacrifice involved.

Leticia thought about it. “I think it was
Tavia’s…but I really don’t know about the human one.” She glanced
at the box. “I don’t know whose blood is in there too.”

Dresan went up to the blue box. He held two
of the vials up to the light, one labeled ‘H’ and the other labeled
‘E.’

“
Same texture, same color…”
he noted. It was the same thing Julius had said to Nin.

All of them looked at the vial in Dresan’s
hand.

Then all was quiet again.

Chapter 20:

Anya’s bike was as she had left it at the
stone church. She looked up at Zouk in the distance, where the
city’s skyline bled into the dawn on the horizon.

“
Maybe we should…” Leticia
said, leaning in to look through the church’s open door, “…stay
here, for a while.”

Both she and Anya had been going without an
ounce of rest, and they were feeling the exhaustion setting in.
They had nearly fallen asleep while riding on their bikes on
several occasions, which was a dangerous situation to be in.
Admittedly though, it couldn’t even be compared to the events they
had just gone through.

Anya angrily wiped aside the tears that
streaked down the sides of her face, before riding back to her
apartment, with Leticia on the passenger’s seat. She felt like she
deserved to go straight into the jaws of Hell. She felt so
useless—she could have, should have been more aware—she’d been
there, facing Nin, right up to the last moment before he was hit by
Julius’s bullet—why didn’t she do something? How could she have
allowed it to end, the way that it did? All she wanted to do was
close her eyes, and drown in the symphonies of her battered
heart.

The heavy feeling in their hearts lifted, as
they rode into the city streets. New trees and shrubs seemed to
have cropped up overnight—along the pavements, in the city’s parks,
in people’s private plots of land—which turned Zouk into a
flourishing urban garden city. Anya and Leticia noticed that the
winding alleyways, sidewalk cafes, and hidden gardens, seemed
fresher and more alive than the gleaming skyscrapers and the noise
and neon of the capital. They passed by a floral shop which was
close to overflowing with the most vibrant, fragrant flowers they’d
seen in a long time. Most of the flowers were usually half-wilted
at best, by the time they got to the store. Had it been just two
days, since hearing about the parchment and Bloodstar?

Anya swerved on her bike, when someone
smashed a GVMT phone down onto the road in a fit of rage.

“
Massive GVMT malfunction
across Zouk City,” Leticia read the text headline on one of the
giant 24/7-broadcast screens on the city’s buildings.

Anya and Leticia would have gotten some shut
eye right away, if Leticia had not switched on the television for
the morning news.

“
Breaking news,” they heard
the TV announcer reciting in a hoarse voice. The usually
bright-faced announcer, Robyn McCall, had frazzled hair, and looked
like she had been working for the past twenty-four hours straight.
“Xenith Corporation, one of the Big Four of international
pharmaceutical megacorporations, has had its headquarters in Zouk
City
completely
overrun by…”

The announcer took a breath, as the screen
showed a building that was covered with all sorts of plants, and
vines, and shoots that snaked in and out of the building’s windows,
threatening to swallow the entire building into the ground.

“
Plants!” Robyn McCall
continued, incredulously.

Anya and Leticia sat on the sofa, as the
screen showed updates around the world, where similar vines and
shoots were engulfing oil refineries, companies that didn’t abide
by environmental standards, and anything that choked the systems of
the natural world.

“
That’s my dad…” Anya
murmured, when the screen showed clips of environmental activists
around the world. The one with her dad showed a group holding up
handwritten signs, with messages like: “Earth—1 / Xenith—0.” They
were standing in front of Xenith’s center of operations, in the
United Kingdom.

“
Yeah.” Leticia wouldn’t
have recognized Mr. London, were it not for a cleft in his chin,
and the longish bone structure of his face. “He’s in the
U.K.?”

“
Mr. London is in…London.”
Anya gave a quick smile, shaking her head slightly. Her dad looked
to be in high spirits, which mattered more than his exact
geographic location.

“
I guess legends really do
exist,” Leticia said, sinking back into her seat.

“
I hope they don’t try to
start excavating at the same site again,” Anya added, suddenly
wondering if the same thing would happen all over again, as she
tried to block out her feelings of sorrow.

“
I doubt it,” Leticia
answered, motioning to the TV screen, and turning up the volume.
She too, wanted to ease back into a life of normalcy, if it was
possible. The station was broadcasting an interview with the chief
scientist at Xenith Corporation.

“
It was amazing, what we
witnessed,” the chief scientist declared, adjusting his glasses,
which sat at a slant on his nose bridge. “After some investigation,
we found that the whole Xenith team had been duped by
Julius—”