If God Will Send His Angels
PART FOUR
"If God will send his angels
We sure could use them here right now
Well if God will send his angels
And I don't have to know how
And I don't need to know why
And I don't want a promise
'Cause I don't want a lie"
–U2, "If God Will Send His Angels"
"I trusted you."
"More the fool you."
"Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea."
"Does this look like a good idea to you?"
"From where I'm standing..."
"Not really, huh?"
"Actually, it does. This is perfect."
"What are you on?"
"This is exactly what I want."
"I'll kill you, you know."
"No, you won't. You can't."
"Watch me." A hammer clicked, a gun cocking.
"Wait."
"You dared me."
"Just listen."
"I'm all ears."
"Funny. Listen, you can not pull that trigger."
"Are you asking to die?"
"No. I'm just stating a fact. You can't kill me."
"And just why not?"
"Because I'm too valuable to you. I'm your ticket home."
There was no immediate reply.
"So what gave me away?"
"I don't know. Something about how you handled the situation just now."
"Like what?"
"Your arm." Billy pointed to the blood dripping from Seraphita's left arm, midway between the wrist and elbow. The pain must be unbearable, he thought– it's a wonder she can hold the gun to my head. It's a wonder I can hold mine to hers. "You love your sister that much?"
"Yeah," Seraphita said. "I do. Enough to do this."
"Who got to you first?" Billy asked. "Brian? Or did you have a chat with the good Doctor VanAlton?"
"It was one of the guards last night," Seraphita said. "I heard him talking to Saffron. She said we'd all die."
"I thought you were the first one asleep."
"I faked," Seraphita shrugged, wincing at the sharp pain from moving her arm even that fraction. "I slept plenty on the plane. I goof around a lot, but I know what I'm doing."
"I get it now," Billy said. "No wonder you girls were such pains in the ass. You always had a trick up your sleeve."
"She must have known I wasn't asleep, though," Seraphita continued. "I don't remember what she said, exactly, but she told me that if you died, my sister would be safe. I can't believe I believed her."
"So the arm was..."
"A last resort," Seraphita said, bowing her head. "I wanted to help her, but... I didn't think it was real. I had to make sure I wasn't having another nightmare..."
"You have nightmares, Sera?" he asked, his voice softening.
"She's everything to me, Billy," Seraphita said. "Everything. She protected me when we were little, she kept me safe when we were in Etrenank... I wanted to be just like her. That's how I got to be an Element."
Billy didn't respond.
"The one time I could protect her, Billy... the one time I could save her, instead of her having to protect me..." The tears dribbled freely from Seraphita's eyes. "The Commander wasn't going to help us. We had to do this on our own. And I failed..."
"Sera, listen to me." Billy's voice was soft but tense. "Sera, look up. Look at me." Her green eyes met his blue-gray ones. "We are going to save the girls, and Ramsus. Make no mistake about that. We will get them for what they've done. Not you. We. Us."
"Us?" she sobbed. Billy noted that she hadn't lowered the gun. He also noted that he hadn't lowered his, either.
"Yes, us. We are the only ones left. But we can't do it holding guns to each other's heads." He holstered his gun and gripped the hammer of Seraphita's. Slowly, she let her finger off the trigger, and the hammer slid gently back to the back of the barrel. "We have to work together. You have to trust me."
"You don't trust me," she sobbed.
"I do," he said. "Look at your arm." Seraphita covered the bite wound with her other hand. "That's enough proof right there. You would sacrifice yourself for her. We may have to, but I swear to you that I trust you. Because of that. We have to move."
Seraphita broke down, clutching Billy. "I can't!" she wailed. "They'll get them and they'll die! They already have them! How can we stop them?"
"What do you mean, they have them?" Billy asked.
The four Solaris guards who approached from each end of the hallway answered that question quite adequately, Billy thought.
"I had run out of aces. I was at the complete mercy of Saffron VanAlton.
"Emeralda couldn't really be considered to be too much of an advantage. I didn't trust her completely– how was I to know whether or not she was telling the truth, or if she was just playing me the same way Saffron was? And the girls... well, God only knew where the girls and Billy were. If I had known what had happened I probably still wouldn't have had much of a chance.
"But there was a chance. There was hope. Only one thought drove me forward in the face of all the despair Saffron was trying to feed me:
"She was wrong, and I was going to make her pay."
–Kahran Ramsus, "Autobiography"
Kahran Ramsus didn't look to the side as he passed countless doorways. He didn't nod to any of the bystanders who watch their newly-crowned Emperor being marched down endless hallways. He didn't even smile to any of the children watching the grim parade. Instead, he stared directly into the back of Saffron VanAlton.
"People of Solaris," she shouted. "Your Emperor goes to be reborn! Praise to him, Child of God, Herald of the Gospel!" A thunderous cheer arose from the crowd, cut off as the turbolift door slammed shut. Saffron turned to face Emeralda. "Secure the Emperor," she said.
The sensation of terror again overtook Ramsus as Emeralda morphed her arm into a blade shape and held it to his throat. He willed himself to remember that it wasn't real, that she was falsifying the weapon for his sake... but a nagging feeling in the back of his mind asked, is she really? Do you know for sure?
"I understand your confusion, Kahran," Saffron said. "Believe me, I have felt it. When that fool told me what he thought to be the truth, when he showed me the wonders I'm going to show you... well, it was all very confusing."
"There's only one thing I want to see, Miang," Ramsus spat.
"The Soylent System?" Saffron asked. "My dear Kahran, if that was all I wanted to show you, you'd certainly be dead by now. No, Kahran, what I'm going to show you will make you wish it were just the Soylent System."
&nb