The God Reborn

Epilogue

Despite her grief, Sarah knew she had to leave the chamber. Laura would have prepared failsafe defenses against her own death. No doubt another version of Laura was already being revived back in her haven.

In a daze, she looked up from Nick's dead body at the girl who was mourning the one-armed old man.

"You saved me," she said in gratitude. "You killed Kobus, and you saved me."

The girl looked up at Sarah, her eyes narrowing in distrust. "I acted for my father." She struggled to her feet, her movements still restrained by the ropes tied around her wrists and ankles.

Sarah held out the blade in her left hand and slowly approached the girl. "I will cut your bindings." She saw now that the girl also had an injured ankle. "Are you all right?"

The girl ignored the question. She simply held out her hands so that Sarah could cut the bindings, and stared at Sarah intently. "Which of the acolyte's gods are you? I've heard you called Abril, and Sarah."

Sarah raised her hands in a gesture of peace. "I'm Sarah. But I'm not one of the gods."

"They were no gods," said the girl dismissively, hobbling forward on her injured leg. "Only false idols."

As the girl made her way towards the stairs that led to the surface, Sarah looked down at Vinicius' lifeless form to bid it goodbye. Then she began making her way towards the exit. She did not know where she would go from here.

After sleeping for one thousand years, her only goal had been to find a way to be back together with Nick. But now Nick was lost to her forever.

She would never be able to return to her hiding spot in Laura's haven. She would be hunted by all of the Aeons. Maybe she would live a few more decades, maybe she would be dead tomorrow. But she was living a mortal life in Abril's body. When Abril's body died, so would she.

That knowledge came as a relief. It would release her from her longing, and from her regret.

As she passed the smoking metallic object in the center of the chamber, she forced herself to pull her eyes from Nick's body.

The chamber's lights flickered and Sarah saw a faint glimmer from below the muddy water lapping at the base of the destroyed metal cube. She knelt and reached into the water, emerging with a small object. It had once been shiny, but over centuries it had been encrusted with mineral deposits.

She broke away the crust in her fingers to reveal her silver crucifix necklace. It was the one she had given to Nick one thousand years earlier.

She had given the necklace not to the twisted Vinicius that had been reanimated by Laura, but to the real Nick, the one she had rescued. The one she had rescued, then lost again. The one who must have died early in the Foundation War.

She squinted at the destroyed metal device in the center of the chamber. She realized at its core was a high-powered computer, encased in layer after layer of protective armor.

Could it be? Had her Nick died right here in this room? General Jaeger had taken him to a secret facility in Washington, a facility that would have had powerful computers shielded from attack. It had to be!

She reached into the jagged edged of the hole in the computer's armor and began tearing it apart. She slashed her hands on sharp metallic edges, she lost fingernails trying to pry apart panels, but she kept feverishly pulling at the metal shards.

Finally, she exposed the computer's innards. The processor was completely destroyed, fused by Laura's laser blast into a blackened lump of metal and plastic.

But the internal data crystal was intact! She wiped the blood off her abraded palms and carefully unplugged the data crystal from the computer's data port.

She lifted it to her eyes, as if she could see what was inside it. "Nick? Are you in here?" she whispered, not daring to believe it but determined to try anyway.

She reached around behind her neck and inserted the data crystal into one of the data jacks at the back of her MindWave.

Fin