Last Sanctuary

Chapter 12: The Surface

I watch Sanctuary die from the ridge. The ground keeps shaking. Cracks spread across the earth like a broken mirror. Smoke and fire pour from the fissures.

The Shell's light pulses beneath the rubble. Green and blue, surging, fading, surging again. It's still working. Even buried underground, it's working.

I can't look away.

"Nova," Chen says. "We need to move. More of the ground could collapse. We're not safe here."

"I know."

I don't move.

Kael's hand lands on my shoulder. Warm. Solid. "Nova."

"I know."

I stand up. My legs are shaky. My whole body aches from the fight, from the run, from the fall. There's blood on my hands. I don't know whose it is. Mine. Kael's. The enforcers'. It doesn't matter.

We walk.

The landscape is alien. The sky is brighter than I've ever seen it. Real blue. Clouds — actual clouds — drift overhead. I've read about clouds in old books. I've seen pictures. But seeing them in person is different. They're massive. They move. They change shape as I watch.

I stop and stare at them like a child.

"Never seen a cloud before?" Kael asks.

"Never."

"Welcome to the surface."

The ground is covered in patches of green. Moss. Grass. Small plants I don't recognize. They're spreading as I watch, creeping across the cracked earth like slow-motion waves. New shoots push through the soil. Leaves unfurl.

"It's accelerating," Chen says. He's holding his wounded arm, limping. "The terraforming. The Shell's output is increasing geometrically. It's going to transform everything in a radius of hundreds of miles."

"Good," I say.

"Is it?"

I stop. I turn to face him. His face is pale. Sweat beads on his forehead. But his eyes are sharp. Questioning. "What do you mean?"

He looks at the spreading green. At the bright sky. At the horizon where the light still pulses. "We don't know what this will do. We don't know how far it will spread. We don't know if the atmosphere is breathable in the long term. We don't know if the plants are toxic. We don't know anything."

"I know my father built it to save us."

"Your father built it to save us in controlled conditions. Over years. Decades. Not all at once in a catastrophic energy release."

I don't have an answer for that. The doubt creeps in. What if he's right? What if I've made a terrible mistake?

Kael steps between us. "Arguing won't help. We need shelter. Water. Medical supplies. Chen's bleeding out. We can debate the ethics later."

He's right.

We keep walking.

The landscape rises and falls. Hills. Valleys. Features I've only seen in old books. The world above Sanctuary was supposed to be a wasteland. Dead. Barren. Uninhabitable. That's what they told us. That's what we believed.

It's not anymore.

We find a cave by evening. Small. Dry. Better than nothing. The entrance is narrow, hidden behind a rock formation. It opens into a chamber maybe twenty feet across. The floor is sandy. The ceiling is high enough to stand.

Kael builds a fire from dead brush he gathers outside. The flames crackle and pop. The light dances on the cave walls. I've never had a fire outside before. I've only seen them in the furnaces of Sanctuary. This feels different. Ancient. Primal.

Chen sits against the wall. His face is gray. The bleeding has slowed but it hasn't stopped. The bandage is soaked through.

I tear more strips from my shirt and re-bandage his arm. He winces but doesn't complain. His skin is hot to the touch.

"You did good today," I say.

"I did stupid," he says. "I followed you into a collapsing base."

"Same thing."

He almost smiles. It's a weak smile, but it's there.

Kael sits across the fire. The flames cast shadows across his face. He's looking at me. I can feel his gaze.

"What?" I ask.

"Nothing."

"Then stop looking."

He doesn't stop.

We sleep in shifts. I take the first watch. I sit at the cave entrance and watch the sky darken. The orange fades to purple. The purple fades to black.

Stars appear. Hundreds of them. Thousands.

I've never seen stars.

I count them until I lose track. There are too many. They're too bright. Some of them twinkle. Some of them are steady. I read about that once. Atmospheric interference causes twinkling. The steady ones are planets.

My father's face appears in my mind. His hologram. His voice.

"You have a choice."

I made it. Now I have to live with it.

The night passes. Nothing comes for us. The fire dies to embers. I add more wood. It catches. The flames dance again.

Morning brings more light. The sun rises — an actual sun — and paints the sky in shades of orange and pink that I have no words for. The green has spread further overnight. I can see it from the cave entrance, creeping across the valley below like a living carpet.

"It's still growing," Chen says. He's awake, standing in the cave mouth beside me. He looks better today. Not good. Better. "I measured the spread rate last night using relative landmarks. It's exponential. Doubling every twelve hours."

"How long until it reaches the coast?"

"A month. Maybe less if the rate continues to accelerate."

The coast. I've never seen the coast. I've only read about it in my father's books. Endless water. Waves. Salt in the air.

We leave the cave and walk.

The day is warm. Warm in a way I've never felt. The air is thick with smells I can't name. Dirt. Grass. Something floral and sweet. I breathe deeply. My lungs fill with air that doesn't taste of recycled filters and metal.

We find water in a stream. Clear. Running. Cold.

I kneel and drink. The water tastes like nothing I've ever had. Clean. Alive. It's so cold it hurts my teeth.

Chen tests it with his portable analyzer. He watches the screen. His eyebrows rise. "It's clean. Higher oxygen content than we had in Sanctuary. Higher than standard atmospheric models predicted."

"The terraforming," Kael says.

"Must be."

We fill every container we have and keep walking.

We see no one.

The first settlement we find is empty. A cluster of makeshift shelters built against a rock face. Cooking fires still warm. Belongings scattered on the ground. Footprints leading away, heading west.

They ran.

"From what?" Kael asks.

I don't know.

We search the settlement. We find food. Water. Supplies. Tools. A first aid kit that Chen uses to properly bandage his arm.

There are signs of struggle. A knocked-over table. A broken chair. Blood on the ground, dried and brown.

"Something happened here," Chen says.

"Something bad," I agree.

We leave before nightfall. None of us wants to stay.

More days pass. I lose count.

The landscape changes. Hills give way to flatlands. Flatlands give way to what might once have been a forest. Dead trees stand like skeletons, their bare branches reaching for the sky. But new growth pushes up between them. Green shoots. Small leaves. Vines climbing the dead trunks. Life returning.

We find more survivors.

A woman and her daughter hiding in a hollowed-out vehicle. They emerge when we call out. Dirty. Scared. Hungry. The girl can't be more than eight. She hides behind her mother's legs.

I share our food. Kael shares our water.

"What happened?" the woman asks. "The ground shook. The lights in the sky. We ran. We don't know where to go."

"The old world ended," I say. "A new one is starting."

She doesn't understand. Neither do I, really.

They follow us.

We find a man alone. He's armed. He points his rifle at us, his finger on the trigger.

"We're not enemies," I say.

"Everyone's an enemy now."

"Not us. We're survivors. Just like you."

He studies us. His eyes move from me to Kael to Chen to the woman and the girl. He lowers his rifle. He's older. Gray hair. Deep lines on his face. Hard eyes.

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know," I say.

"That's not a plan."

"It's the only one I have."

He thinks about that. He looks at the sky. At the green ground. At the smoke rising in the distance. Then he shoulders his pack and falls in behind us.

Our group grows.

By the end of the first week, we're twenty-three people. Survivors from Sanctuary. Survivors from the surface. All of them lost. All of them looking for something to believe in.

I don't know what to tell them.

"We need a destination," Kael says one night. We're sitting apart from the group, watching the fire. The others are sleeping in a loose circle around the flames. "We can't keep wandering. People need purpose."

"I know."

"So where? What's the plan?"

I look at the stars. They're so clear now. So bright. I trace patterns in them, constellations I've only seen in star charts.

"There's a valley," I say. "My father mentioned it in his notes. A hundred miles east of Sanctuary. Protected by mountains on three sides. Good water. Fertile soil."

"How do you know it still exists?"

"I don't."

"But you want to try."

"Yes."

He nods. "Then we try."

The next morning, I tell the group. Some of them resist. They want to stay. They want to return to what's left of their homes. They want to search for family.

"There's nothing to return to," I say. "The old world is gone. The new one is out there. I'm going to find it. I'm going to build something new."

Half of them stay. The other half follows.

We walk east.