When she finally righted herself on solid ground again, Kari found herself facing the Apostle in a place blacker than the deepest night. The darkness was not the absence of light. Rather, it was the absence of everything else. Though it felt solid beneath her feet, it appeared as though she was standing on nothingness.
As Kari stepped forward, the Apostle mirrored her movements, carrying a spear
identical to her own rather than a sword.
“What is going on,” Kari whispered. “Where am I?”
Reaching up, the Apostle removed her mask, tossing it aside where it shattered like glass, and beneath it was her own face, as clear as if seen in a mirror, except devoid of color.
“Who are you,” Kari asked.
“What you fear most,” the other answered. “I lurk in your heart, always waiting for my chance to take what is rightfully mine. I am your desire to turn everything to nothing so that no one will have what you do not, an identity. I am Kari’s jealous rage. I am Kari’s lack of substance. I am Kari’s desire to become her enemy, and complete her quest. Once you are dead, I will take control, and the Apostle will have a new ally.”
Leaping forward, the shadow Kari unleashed her fury. With her mind reeling at what was happening, Kari was pushed steadily backward. Snarling like a beast, the shadow fought like a madwoman and it was all Kari could do to fend off her attacks.
Driven backward by her own dark fears, she could do nothing but defend.
“No,” Kari desperately tried to push herself onto the offensive, only to have her every attempt foiled before it began. “I’m not like that. I don’t want what she wants!”
“You are so much like her that it’s frightening,” the shadow hissed. “You want to destroy everything that you cannot have.”
“You can’t be serious,” Kari cried. Sure she had flashes of anger, and irrational thoughts, but so did everyone else. She couldn’t count the times she’d wanted to strangle Jonathan and Michael, but that was normal. She didn’t want to do anything so drastic as destroy all of reality like the Apostle did.
“If nothing exists,” the shadow pressed, “then everyone else will be just like you, nothing. That’s what you want more than anything else. You want everyone else to be as sad, pathetic, and worthless as you are. You’ve never even thought what you might do with a life of your own, have you?”
Staggering backward, Kari glanced at her arm to see a deep gash pouring out
blood. The shadow examined a similar wound on her left forearm. Then Kari knew. She could never fight against this foe. The shadow was more than a mirror image of her. It was her—a part of herself that she’d never wanted to acknowledge before—and every wound she inflicted upon it would be mirrored back on her.
Had she attacked this phantom conjured from her own fears and insecurities,
she’d have plunged a blade through her own heart. Raising her spear to defend, Kari truly looked at the shadow, at what she was, and what she represented.
On some, deep, unconscious level, she’d let her sudden lack of identity drive her to dark thoughts, even if she’d never dared acknowledge they even existed. True, if all existence were unraveled, then everyone else would be the same as her, without identity.
Such thoughts frightened her deeply, and she’d locked them away to fester. If she did that, she was just as bad as the Apostle, who was evil to the core. Looking at it now, she could see how silly it all was. There really was nothing to fear. She had a conscience, and she knew that she could never do something so horrible as what the Apostle planned on Cain’s behalf.
She saw one way to defeat this phantom, and that was to embrace who she was,
and what shaped her life. It was time to be herself, rather than looking to the needs of others to define her. When she really looked into her heart, she knew who she was, and couldn’t believe she’d ever missed it before. How could she have been so blind?
Doing the hardest thing she had ever done in her life, Kari tossed her spear aside.
The spear in the shadow’s hands vanished.
Sneering, the shadow took a step back. “You think you’ve won with a little
trick?”
“No,” Kari said. “I think I’ve won because now I know that there is a darkness in my own heart, and I choose to cut you away. Knowing that you are a part of me, I can easily control or discard you.”
Reaching toward the shadow, Kari forced her mirror image to do the same. Their hands touched, and Kari grasped the shadow tightly, lacing their fingers together.
“I know who I am,” Kari said firmly. “And I am not you. I will never become the Apostle, nor would I ever do anything to harm the innocent. I can be anyone that I choose to be, and I choose to be a protector of those who cannot protect themselves. It is who I wish to be, and I have no more need of you. Be gone, you foul, wretched piece of filth!”
As the shadow blew away like smoke on the wind, Kari stepped back into the
light. She did so a split second too late to catch the Apostle as she leapt from the wall, and hit the ground with a roll. Jonathan tackled her to the ground and they struggled for a few seconds before she broke free and dove through the Gate.
Beside her, Gabriel was picking himself up with Sam’s help. Rushing to his other side, Kari helped him to his feet.
“Sorry,” she said. “Sometimes I forget that humans are a lot more fragile than I am.”
“Nevermind that! She went through the Gate,” Gabriel cried. “Sam. Mister
Mittens. We’ve got to get you down there. Do you two remember everything I told you about what you need to do?”
“Yes,” Sam and the cat chorused.
Glancing around, Kari found that most of the mutants were ignoring the staircase down to the courtyard in favor of climbing down the wall, or simply leaping from it.
Below, the soldiers were cutting them to ribbons with the help of Jonathan and Michael, but they could only hold out for so long before the sheer numbers overwhelmed them.
“Come on,” Kari pointed to the stairs. “I’ll clear a path for you.”
Snatching her spear from the ground, she began cleaving her way to the stairs.
With guns blazing, Gabriel and Sam followed.
Chapter 46: Paradox
In movies, the gritty battle scenes were always filmed with the camera bouncing around all over the place, looking around aimlessly. The sound was always muted, and sometimes things ran just a little slower or choppier than they should have. It had always annoyed Gabriel, because the point of a movie was to show people what is happening, rather than set the camera on a pain mixer and laugh as the audience tried to figure out what was going on.
He’d never thought, until now, how much like a real battle those films were. His eyes were never still, always moving and jerking toward any movement. His heart was pounding so loudly in his ears that it seemed to mute any other sound. His breath rasped raggedly in his throat and the recoil from his pistols jolted up his arms continuously, filling his joints with a dull ache.
Dashing toward the stairs, hard on Kari’s tails, Gabriel could hear someone
screaming a desperate battlecry. He wasn’t sure, but he thought it might be him.
Sheer confusion milled about in every direction as Gabriel dashed down the stairs in the wake of Kari, who seemed a whirlwind of blood and death. He’d seen her fight against the Apostle, and that had been epic. The way they’d moved with supernatural speed and grace was both awe-inspiring, and terrible.
Scanning for anything that Kari missed, Gabriel fired his twin pistols at anything that moved in her wake. Blood was heavy in the air, hanging like a mist, as hideous creature after hideous creature fell dead. His left hand burned with the effort of holding onto his pistol missing a finger and a half. He seemed unable to catch his breath and his muscles were trembling with the amount of adrenaline coursing through his veins. He could hear gunshots behind him as Sam fired her pistol, but it was distant and unimportant.