Chapter Thirty-Eight
I race across the courtyard, down the hall, swiping away tears with the heel of my hand as I arrive at the gate.
“I need a Day Pass,” I choke.
The gatekeeper narrows his eyes. “Where’s your permission slip?”
I glare at him. “Give me a Day Pass, or—or you’ll have Master Kalen to answer to.”
The gatekeeper blinks several times. He knows Kalen likes me. He picks up a Day Pass wristband, sets the time, and hands it to me, then clicks open the gate.
Stepping out onto the street, I break into a run toward the city. I don’t know where I’m going, but I feel like I could run for eternity and never get tired. The rage, the grief, it pours into my blood like uncontainable energy. And I race the way I raced through the cornfields on Earth. I run through the darkness to the one place in this city where no walls trap me.
The Devittrinean Sea.
When I arrive, I bolt across the sand until I reach the water’s edge, and I collapse. I fall onto my knees and drag air into my starving lungs. My fingers dig into the sand and clench into fists. A cool wind bursts in from the sea and blasts my thoughts into a hundred million pieces.
“Why?” I whisper against the wind. Why? The wind blows harder, as though Elohim himself were answering me, as though God actually kind of cares about a worthless Human like me. I rise to my feet and face him head on. “Are you even here?” I look at the heavens, the stars burning holes in the onyx sky. “SPEAK!”
The wind stops.
But there’s no voice.
I look at the ocean expanding before me, an abysmal mass of mystery and danger…just like Tavdora.
The ocean.
The sky.
Stretching for eternity.
If only I could take hold of the wind and let it sweep me far away from this planet. If only my spirit could find freedom.
Can’t it? A small voice asks.
A twenty-foot wave crashes in the distance, like a monster clawing its way past the surface of the sea only to surrender to gravity. It rushes along the surface of the water, shrinking smaller and smaller until it’s nothing but a small wave lapping over my toes. Then it cowers away, receding, pulling sand out from beneath my heels and making me sink deeper into the planet.
What is the universe but a tiny grain of sand that lay beneath the mercy of the waves?
Another wave tumbles onto the shore. This one collides into my shins. The tide is pulling in fast and the current is strong, tugging at my calves with a force that’s almost magnetic. I take a step farther in until the next wave rushes into my knees. The sea seems to beckon. I want to feel life pulse through my veins again. I want to feel alive and free. And the ocean seems to promise just that. Life.
I walk in until the water reaches my waist. Save for the city lights glowing off the water’s surface like distant apparitions, everything is pitch black. Another wave rushes past me, lifting me off the ground for only a moment before my feet feel the security of the sand again. Leaning back, I look at the stars and let the current sway me.
We used to swim in the river all the time at home, Terrence, Josiah, Rika, and me. Back when Rika was still alive, Terrence hadn’t left us yet, and Josiah wasn’t a rotten traitor. Those were the good days. The days of freedom and complete abandon. But they ended too soon.
I left the security of home, and now here I am, on this decadent planet of injustice and cruelty where slaves get incinerated just for being sick, and I want to go back. I want to go back home. I’ve never wanted to go home as much as I do now, to that place where I didn’t know what went on in the rest of the universe, where my biggest problem was Josiah falling in love with another girl. How small that seems in the light of everything I know now.
A voice echoes in the distance. Someone’s calling my name. I straighten, but not completely because suddenly a wave is crashing down on top up me and I’m shoved under the surface of the water. Salty water invades my mouth and my ears and my nose, stinging my eyes, and the force of the shock steals the breath from my lungs. I can’t breathe. I thrash my arms until I reach the surface of the sea again.
Oxygen. Breathe it in.
And then I’m shoved back under by another wave and I can’t breathe. I’m reliving Zimri’s torture again. I open my mouth to scream but swallow a gulp of salty water instead. My heart’s beating too fast, thrashing against my eardrums like a countdown to my death. My feet frantically search for solid ground, but there’s nothing there.
No surface of the sea.
No ocean floor.
I’m suspended in space.
There has to be something—something for me to grasp onto, because I’m not supposed to die like this—it’s not supposed to end like this—but my oxygen levels are getting lower and the tide’s pulling me in two different directions, and I don’t exactly know which way is up, and I can’t breathe can’t breathe can’t breathe and I realize—
This is the end.
Exhausted, I release my last breath, surrendering to the power of the sea, when something firm grips my arm and pulls me deeper into oblivion.