Beneath The Torn Sky Part 8

Chapter 16, Page Twenty Three: Beneath The Torn Sky -- Part 8 pic and text

In the wake of my anger he stared back at me, silent, his eyes widened, and despite the time ticking away, despite the screaming, pressing need for haste, I did not dare break the silence. This once, it seemed, I had struck true. The winds of my anger seemed to have doused the flames in his mind, and in his eyes, for the first time, I saw nothing of hatred and rage. He looked at me and in his eyes, this once, I saw nothing but doubt, tinged with dismay. He looked, for the first time since I’d known him, nothing but lost and alone, broken. Broken by hope and the destruction of hope. I said nothing, and waited.

“My name. . . was Yang Na Thui,” he said softly, at last. “’He who sees with his mind.’” His voice held a slightly disbelieving quality, like one who has found, tucked away, something long thought lost. “But that boy died a long time ago. At the age of seventeen, at Dry Wells. He stood, and the bodies of the warriors of his tribe, men he had known and admired, hung from crosses. The final reward from the Bull, for those who had, in the end, resisted its dictates. He stood, and a man named Vulpes Inculta approached him, and that boy was given a choice. To see with his mind, which could deceive him, or to choose to see with his eyes, the way the world truly was.” He turned away, back towards the flag.

“He isn’t dead, Ulysses. He is you. What we were never truly dies; that was your message for me. See again with your mind, please. Find that again. Our eyes can deceive us as well, but our minds should stay true, if we know ourselves. See with your mind, Ulysses. This is wrong, and it isn’t the way. Please, see, and end this. Stop this madness while there is still time.”

He looked back at me, and it seemed what was left in his eyes seemed to crack, his shoulders slumped slightly. “I. . . cannot,” he said finally, and now I heard nothing but bitterness. “I did not lie to you. It took me too long to tell the missiles what to do. There is not enough time to take it back. You must choose.” His eyes, and the tone in his voice, finally convinced me and I felt my heart sink, my soul shrink in dismay. There was in him no more fight or resistance. No contempt, or cutting anger. He was telling the truth.

I turned away from him, jaw clenched tightly. The switch stood in front of me, demanding of me a choice. To choose who and where to bring death, to the Bear or the Bull, and I had to do something, what I could. The seconds slipped away, but I could not make myself move. I could not find it in me to do anything yet. I did not wish to act, because I knew that there wasn’t, really, a choice to be made. The choice as it was had been made a long time ago, and now there was nothing left but to act on it. I knew that I would, in the end, choose the Bull. I had hated the Bear, perhaps because of how similar they were to myself, but the Bull, and the Way of the Bull, I had always rejected, even while I walked its path for a time. They had always been my antithesis, and the flaws of the Bear were, to me, less repugnant, less dangerous. But it still wasn’t right, and there was no justice to be found in this place. I would bring death to the Bull not as a means of protecting myself from their threat, or as judgment against their actions, or even revenge against the damage they’d caused. It would, in the end, be only one person’s choice, directing power where they felt it would do the more preferable damage. I would do it, and I would live on as I had to, but there was nothing for me but bitterness, and my eyes squeezed shut tightly, as I searched for any way, any possible method, of finding another path. “I cannot make this choice,” I moaned, words escaping involuntarily from my lips, as I tried to force my hands to do what had to be done.

He said nothing further, but I was still answered. From behind me, clear above the rising sounds of the engines, I heard a soft, sad, electronic sound.