“Stop reading my mind. What of this service?” Milly said.
“You must agree to the tenets of Argartha and be thoroughly vetted,” Peter said. “There is no other way. Or, you can go home.”
Milly had known there would be some kind of test, but she’d never expected it to be like this. “I don’t understand,” she said.
“They must know who you are in your heart, when nobody is looking and everything else is stripped away,” Peter said.
“Is this real?” she asked.
“Define real?”
“Can I die? Feel pain?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Why are you here?” Milly asked.
“Because you chose me,” Peter said.
“No I didn’t,” she said.
“You will,” he said.
Everything spun and snapped to black.
Milly stood in the forest. A three-quarter moon hung low in the sky, and the stars winked like a trillion eyes. Evergreens and oak packed in around her, the air redolent of pine and rot. Helga sat before her, her cloudy eyes staring up at Milly, who flinched and jumped back. Helga inched forward.
Milly held a club, and her fingers hurt from gripping it so tight. Helga cried and whimpered. Did she have to put the poor animal out of its misery again? Milly stepped forward, but the animal didn’t budge, but continued to moan and cry with pain. She couldn’t do it. Somehow it had been different the night she’d held the dying animal. She’d gone on instinct, and now those same instincts told her there was no way she’d beat Helga to death with a club.
The dog’s eyes bled, thin streams of red running down her snout. Helga shook, her reedy legs bending and almost giving way. Milly brought up the club, but looked away. Helga’s cries had reached a fever pitch, blood poured from her mouth, yet still Milly didn’t swing her club. She’d killed the animal once, but there would be no second time.
The scene shifted, a black tornado throwing Milly around like a palm leaf. She landed face down on the beach, sand jamming into her nose and eyes. She spit sand and got up. It was Respite; she recognized the shoreline, the rock formations, and the large chunks of the Oceanic Eco that littered the ocean like dominoes waiting to fall.
“Hi, mom.”
Milly whirled to find Randy.
“I heard your message,” he said.
Milly thought he looked to be in his mid-teens, and she smiled at his handsome face and mischievous eyes. Waves crashed, the sea breeze blew, and the intoxicating scent of gardenias brought her home. “Hello, sweet, you look good. So big,” she said.
He sat on the sand and looked up at her, so Milly sat before him.
“Give me your hands,” he said.
Milly offered her hands and he took them. He was cold, colder than a living person should be, and this reminded her that this wasn’t her son.
“Tell me about Axe,” he said.
“What’s there to say? He killed Vera and Peter, held me, Tester, Ingo and Robin captive for six years.”
Randy said, “And then?”
“Then we killed him and escaped,” Milly said.
“We?”
“Robin killed him.”
“But you tried and failed, yes? You had the opportunity to do it and you hesitated. Why?” Randy looked concerned.
“I… I’m not a killer. He was evil, but the end of the world made him that way. He was nuts and treated us all right. I…”
“You cared for him?” Randy said.
“I guess I did, though I can’t explain how.”
“Yet you had no trouble killing Helga, who you loved.”
“That was different. I did it because I loved her. I put her out of her misery,” Milly said.
“Did you?”
Randy faded, along with the beach, the sound of waves, and guilt flooded through her. What if Helga could have gotten better? What if she’d been wrong and Helga would’ve been all right in time? Who was she to take a life into her hands? She said nothing, and right before Randy blinked out, he said, “You did the right thing by Helga.”
Then she stood before Axe and Helga. Both looked fit and unharmed as they had when they’d first met, and each had a door behind them. White nothingness surrounded them and the air smelled of sweat. Helga growled, protecting her door, and Axe had a rifle pointed at her. Her Glock 19 appeared in her hand. She pulled the magazine free. Only one bullet. This was bullshit. She wasn’t a killer, and she wouldn’t let them make her one.
She dropped the Glock.
Axe shot her in the chest, and she crumpled to her knees, blood pouring from her mouth. She pitched over as the world spun, and all the challenges she’d overcome to get to this time and place were for naught because she’d been unable to kill a killer. Dizziness spun her world, and she was tired, so very tired. She’d close her eyes, go to sleep, and all this would be over. Her final thought before darkness took her was that she should’ve shot Axe, but it was too late.
She passed out.
When she woke, she had no wound. Her chest hurt where she’d been shot, and tiny stars danced before her eyes, but otherwise she felt fine. Images of her life flashed through her as the Argarthians flipped through the pages of her life. She stood with Randy and Curso by the sea, watching her mother’s funeral barge disappear on the horizon. Peter’s kiss, the boat, the trip across the sea, Hansa, Stadium, Axe, the guidestone—it all crammed into her brain at once and made her head ache.
Suspended in blackness, cold piercing her joints, her head pounding in rhythm with her heart, she floated alone in a void. For an instant she thought she’d died, then there was a voice coming from the nothingness, calling her name.
“Yes. Yes, I’m here,” Milly said.
“Hi
