Page 58 of Love, Nemesis (Ocean to Ashes #2)

WHEN ANA AWOKE again, she felt sick, dizzy, and nauseous, but never so happy to see the sky, blue and bright with a single soft cloud inching across the sun.

The sun, surprisingly, hurt her eyes.

It was a peculiar sensation, Ana struggling to see past the light as she searched the makeshift room and the makeshift bed. Large chunks of the ceiling were missing, but not blown apart or destroyed. It was as if someone had simply forgotten to finish it.

She lifted her hand up and inspected her arm and then eased up on the mattress and looked around. She only recognized parts of this world.

Literally. Parts.

Though free of damage, there were large pieces missing, paynes neatly missing from windows, bricks missing from the wall, boards missing from the floor.

Beyond the holes in the ceiling she could see that entire buildings no longer existed above her, streets and stands and whole houses were gone from the world outside, neatly cut from reality.

It took her a moment to recognize that she was still in existence.

It took her a moment to recognize that all of the things that were missing had likely been built by people who had been illusions from the start.

She winced as she eased up in bed, freeing a leg from under the sheets as she inspected her arms. If her pain didn’t speak for her being alive, she wasn’t sure what could. Her entire body ached and was covered in every bruising color.

She slowly searched the room. It was silent and still.

Why was she still here?

An eagerness in her caused her to sit up further, but her stomach churned and her limbs felt like they were made of butter, grip slipping underneath her and causing her to fall right off the bed.

She groaned, laughed a bit to herself, and then stifled a heaving stomach as she rolled against the side of the bed.

She groaned again, her commotion seeming to draw a rushed set of footsteps near her bed.

“Ana!” Ana turned as Diane rushed to a stop and knelt beside her. “You’re awake! We weren’t sure you’d ever wake up. We had no idea what happened.”

“You’re alive,” Ana stared as she eased back to her feet. Diane helped her crawl back into the bed and settle under the covers.

Ana hesitated. So, she really was alive? That didn’t make much sense.

“Where are we?” Ana asked, searching the room.

Diane ruffled her short hair with a hand, “The medical ward, well, some of it. It’s missing an entire wing, several rooms, some roofing, most of the doctors and a couple of nurses. What happened to you?”

Ana was still staring at the world and then Diane prodded her again.

Ana explained her last battle, leaving out Lethe and using the term “The Strike” instead. Diane slowly took a seat as Ana spoke, easing back into a chair without removing her eyes from her friend.

“And now I’m here,” Ana said. “We broke The Great Light, didn’t we? Why am I still here? Was there more than one we had to break?”

Diane nodded in acknowledgement of the question but said nothing.

“What is it?” Ana prodded.

“Ana, I’m not an illusion, and neither are you.”

Ana shifted in her bed. “Yes, I am.”

“No.” Diane shook her head, and then explained her side of the story.

They had found Ana alone amid a war-torn battlefield. Released from Chronos, no one in camp had been sure what had happened. The devastation of the city had provided some clues, but the only real clue was Ana, with the broken shell gripped in her hand.

“The Great Light broke,” Diane finished.

“There was a lot of sorrow and joy in that.” Her smile faded for a moment.

“We’ve been grieving a lot for everyone we lost. They’ve made a ledger of everyone and every place missing.

I think it may just be best for you to read it yourself.

Cal—that little twerp—is real. Not sure something fake could be that annoying. ”

Ana laughed, exhaling deeply when her ribs and chest ached.

Diane told her about the damage. The State’s population was in shambles, but not nearly as bad as the Mystics.

Generations of the illusions weaving themselves into the fabric of family bloodlines left entire royal houses empty.

People were planning to dig up graves to see who the last living relative of a bloodline had been.

En Sanctans who had departed from En Sanctus weeks earlier had rallied at the State, the groups uniting in sequences of grief and celebration.

Secrets were unearthed, secrets upon secrets, and with all the destruction, the silence that had haunted them all had finally been removed.

“What about Lethe?” Ana asked after Diane didn’t mention him for some time.

Diane rubbed the back of her neck. “That’s another point, Ana. There are people who disappeared that you know.”

“Who?” Ana asked urgently.

“We couldn’t recover Jasper’s body. And Lethe was missing.

” She then listed the names of other people that Ana knew.

With the almost callous fashion that Diane shared them, it was clear to Ana that this practice was not unfamiliar to her.

No doubt, discovering that missing loved ones were not real had been a heartbreaking and frequent occurrence the past few days.

It had been three long days since The Great Light had broken.

Ana listened patiently. Lethe had to have retreated.

He wouldn’t have stayed as a Strike, would he?

But then again, would he have just left her in that field?

She had decided not to mention Lethe’s actual identity to anyone.

It was only natural Diane and any other would just assume that he, too, was an illusion.

“Diane,” Ana said when her friend was done. “Have we recovered any other blue shells still intact?”

“No. We crushed them all.”

Ana fell back against the bed, staring at the ceiling now before her hands rested over her eyes. She exhaled deeply.

How am I still here? she thought, but the world didn’t seem keen on giving her too much time to think.

After Diane had been with her for a while, new visitors became frequent, and as soon as Ana was on her feet, she couldn’t resist wanting to see what the world had become.

* * *

Ana watched every day as the State healed and transformed into something else.

Rooms of the mostly dismantled government buildings were full of discussion, what remained of the government debating and evaluating the construction of something else, a nameless entity that spurred a sense of renewal and excitement, a collaboration between the State, En Sanctus, and the Mystics.

The days turned into weeks. Diane was swept into leadership positions in the State.

Cal started spending more time with a farmer girl from town but brought her often to any of their gatherings.

When Rule, Diane and Ana’s friend from the science unit, arrived back from the border, Diane introduced him to the others and the group expanded.

The new friendships, tentative as they were, became a sign of healing.

One of the subtle signs of a growing lightheartedness was a moment of laughter, drawing Ana to one office when she returned from an open discussion on the State’s new structure.

She peered in to see Diane sitting on a couch. Rule was standing across the room near the fire. His dark brown hair hung in dreadlocks down his back, ruffled State uniform and large coat hiding a slender, nimble build.

They noticed her quickly, Rule greeting her with a smile as she walked in.

“You look chipper,” he said, offering her a glass, exposing the multitude of rings on his hand.

She nearly startled when she saw Cal sitting near Ares’s desk.

Cal immediately looked suspicious, grinning widely as Ana approached and set a stack of papers on the desk.

Ares, still bandaged heavily, was writing in a focused manner at the desk.

Evening light streamed in sharply from a nearby window, causing him to squint as he wrote.

“They’ve agreed on the new Var…if that’s what we’ll call it,” Ana said, smiling at Ares as Rule and Diane closed the space in the room on either side of her.

She glanced over at Cal, Diane and Rule, “Though the fact that you’re all here tells me this isn’t news, somehow?

How did you all find out so fast? I just came from that meeting. ”

“It hurts, you know,” Ares said, lifting a hand to hide his face from the light. “The real light. It kind of burns.”

Ana chuckled. “Ares. Did you hear me?”

“Yes. Yes.” He reached for a glass of water before tapping the bandages around his waist.

“They’ve picked you,” Ana pushed.

Ares scoffed and then looked up at her. His smile faded. “You aren’t kidding.” He lowered his head. He sat his pen down and leaned back in his chair, surveying his audience. “Hmm. So, this is it then?”

They sat there for a long moment.

“I’ll be the Var ushering in world peace.”

Ana nodded.

They waited in silence.

“We beat The Great Light and the Strike,” he said. “You’re Chronos now. Why don’t we plan to hunt down The Eating Ocean next?”

Ana laughed. “Oh yeah, after we rebuild the entire city and unite all the nations. You’re already talking like a Var.”

“With the right people, I think we’re capable of anything,” he said, offering a knowing glance to everyone else standing by.

Ana looked among them as if there was an inside joke that she didn’t understand.

“You all never answered why you were all here,” she said.

Cal looked like he was bursting to say something. She focused her eyes on him. The weak link. He didn’t speak. She looked at Diane next, Ares, and then Rule.

“We were all waiting for you,” Ares said, with a genuine smile.

A light knock echoed from the door. A small man entered with a ragged robe covered in green stripes and a halo of gray hair around his head.

“Ana,” Ares said from behind her, “meet Manaj. He arrived only recently from En Sanctus.”

Manaj shuffled forward, and offered his hand to Ana, shaking it with a wide smile as if he’d been eager to meet her.