“Gabriel,” Sam’s voice echoed, getting louder as though she was moving toward him.
Materializing as if through the surface of an illusion, Sam’s hand thrust out and grabbed onto his. The second she touched him the humming from his crystal seemed to increase in intensity and the light brightened. The rest of Sam’s body faded back into existence and he pulled her to him, throwing his arms around her to keep her safe, to keep her from fading away again.
He felt the solidity of her body against his, and that she was squeezing him even tighter than he was holding her.
“Oh thank god,” Gabriel breathed over and over again into her hair as he held her to him, afraid to let go lest she fade away again. He’d come so very close to losing her forever, and even worse, because of something he’d done. His heart pounded against his ribs about four times faster than seemed normal, and he could feel her heart thudding in her chest as she pressed against him.
Gabriel couldn’t say how long they stood in each other’s arms. He never wanted to let her go. He loved her. He loved the feel of her body against his, and the unnatural heat of her flesh seeping into him. He loved her smell filling his nose. He loved her arms squeezing tightly around him. Holding her, knowing that she was safe, was his entire universe. He paid little mind to the world changing around them, or the terrified cries and howls of the mutant army as it faded from existence. Sam was safe. Sam was alive. That was all that mattered to him in the whole of creation.
“Would you look at that,” one of the twins said after an eternity.
“It’s over,” Kari said with wonder.
Opening his eyes, Gabriel looked up. They were in a small clearing in a thick jungle. Heat and humidity pressed down on him like a wet blanket and moisture immediately began to condense on his face.
Sam struggled against his chest and he realized that he was smothering her. He hurriedly loosened his grip and she pulled back, taking a deep breath. Hesitating for only a second before pulling his hands from her arms, she gave a satisfied nod when she did not begin fading away again.
Sharing a look with her brothers, Kari held up her crystal. “Maybe your shard of the Gate somehow stabilized her against being erased like the others?”
Fixing Allie with what was probably the fiercest, heart-stopping stare that Gabriel had ever seen, Sam bared her fangs and growled at the solid hologram. “Eighty percent chance no one will disappear huh?”
“Sorry. My bad.”
“Your bad? I oughta—“
A flash of lightning from above and a loud boom of thunder drowned out
whatever Sam thought she ought to do. Cringing at the sound, her wolflike ears first perked forward then slowly laid back as she hunched lower and lower under the rolling boom. Her tail curled up between her legs and she hugged herself tightly.
“What was that,” she cried, fearfully looking up at the storm clouds fast
approaching them. “What made that sound!”
More lightning flashed, followed by thunder and Sam shrieked in fear, covering her ears with her hands and hunching lower still as the first raindrops began to fall.
“Why is there water falling out of the sky,” Sam cried. “What are those things floating up there! What’s making that noise!”
“Hey,” Gabriel said soothingly, putting his arms around her, she trembled hard against him. “It’s just a rainstorm. You can’t tell me you’ve never seen a thunderstorm before.”
“Rain,” Sam asked, pronouncing the word strangely as though she’d never spoken it before. “What’s that?”
“She wouldn’t know,” Allie explained. “After the nuclear winter it never rained again.”
“Hey,” Gabriel said, lifting her chin with his hand so that the rain fell on her face.
“It’s nothing to be afraid of. See, just water. It’s completely normal. The thunder and lightning are just flashes of light and noise. It can’t hurt you.”
Feeling extremely stupid, Gabriel gave her a grin. Those were things that a parent told to a young child frightened by a rainstorm, not a grown woman.
As fast as the storm had come, it blew on past them, leaving clear skies behind, and increased humidity.
“Why is the air so heavy,” Sam asked, wiping rainwater from her face and arms.
“It’s called humidity,” Gabriel explained. “There’s a lot of water in the air.”
“That’s so weird,” Sam said. She gasped, pointing up at the sky. “Look at the sun! Gabriel. Look, it worked!”
Looking up, Gabriel saw that the sun was yellow, and much smaller in the sky
amidst the scattering of moons and the large gas giant. Though he had nearly lost the only thing he had that was of any importance to him, his crazy, impossible plan had actually worked. His father could not have been more wrong about him. He’d had what it took, and now a world that would otherwise have died lived on, and a universe that might have collapsed because of the Apostle was no longer in danger. He’d won, and he had a feeling he’d never hear that horrible voice in his head again.
“Look over there,” Jonathan said, pointing.
As Gabriel turned to look, he noticed that none of them were covered with blood from the battle any longer. The mutants had never existed to bleed on them so the blood was simply gone.
Through the thick jungle, he could just make out the remnants of the Spires of Infinity. Thick, verdant vines were strangling what remained of the huge towers. The central spire was nowhere to be found, and in its place was a deep bowl in the ground like half a sphere.
“Well, I guess we’re done here,” Gabriel said, looking around to the others.
“Thanks a lot, all of you. I couldn’t have done this without you.”
“Pity we’ll never be able to tell anyone how heroic we all are,” Mister Mittens said dejectedly. “No one would believe us, because it technically never happened, right?
There was this pretty little kitty back in Mearon that would likely have been extremely impressed with tales of my exploits saving the world and all.”
“I did not need to hear that,” Sam muttered.
“Oh there’ll be other kitties,” Gabriel soothed. “I’m sure your stories will hook one of them.”
“You obviously don’t know female cats very well,” Mister Mittens sighed.
“There’s not much other than themselves, and maybe a ball of string, that will impress them.”
“It’s the same for females of every species, my good cat,” Jonathan said. Gabriel noticed that he’d moved conveniently out of his sister’s reach before opening his mouth on the subject.
“What now, sis,” Michael asked Kari.
“I guess we move on,” Kari shrugged. “Oh yeah, what happened to the Apostle?”
Gabriel smiled. “She saved us all, I think.”
Three sets of beastlike eyes set in human faces widened and stared at him
incredulously.
“She was being controlled,” Gabriel explained. “Cain was actually inside her
head, controlling her actions like a puppet on a string. She’d nearly killed me, and was about to smash the console so the containment field couldn’t be lowered. In the end she fought against Cain, and threw off his control long enough to lower the field for me.”
“She’s dead,” Jonathan asked.
Gabriel shrugged. “Last I saw of her she was jumping into the black hole with her sword raised like she could fight against death itself. I don’t see how she could have survived.”