The Far Dawn by Kevin Emerson

black, too, beckoning, like some ancient urge to fly was activating, and it was all making me dizzy. Lilly and I held hands and also the stone railings, focusing on each step we took.
    We reached the other side and entered an arched tunnel, past the temporary light. The magnetic pull grew. The sound of voices became clearer, and now a tight cry of pain, a weaker, more-defeated version of the one we’d heard before. We moved down the hall as quietly as we could. At the next light, I spied a narrow doorway in the wall of the tunnel and beside it, a vestibule with a bone-spiked hand impression.
    The key is inside you.
    The door was already open. Electric light flashed from inside, like lightning.
    Come home, Kael. Come home, Rana.
    We edged in. The light grew, the familiar skull white, along with the sounds of electric circuitry.
    My head blurred with that first vision, of the Three on the roof of the Atlantean temple like I’d seen in EdenWest. Lük, Rana, and Kael, kneeling on pillows and about to have their throats slit, their world darkened by ash and destruction. Lük and Rana sharing a tragic glance.
    We reached the end of the short tunnel and peered in.
    A circular room. A pedestal.
    The third Atlantean skull.
    A figure stood over it, hands pressed to its gleaming surface, but in the shock of bright light, I couldn’t make out who it was.
    The skull blazed ghost white, casting shadows around the room, bathing the onlookers, who all wore welding goggles, except for Paul. He stood on the far side, his bionic eyes sparking in electric blue, dressed in his usual shirt, tightly knotted tie, khaki pants, and EdenCorp vest, like this was another day at the office.
    Seeing him, it was all I could do not to scream, to run at him with my knife. The man who had lied to me in nearly every way, killed my friends, turned my sister into a weapon . . .
    Francine and Emiliano stood beside him, clad in the black of Eden’s soldiers. I felt a moment of tightness inside me, a wave of the lost confusion that had nearly drowned me back in Desenna, at having my mother again, only to lose her—
    But no. I’d had enough time to remember my real mom, to remove Francine from the spaces she’d tried to occupy. She’d never been my mother. She was just a soldier of the enemy. But she was also a symbol of what I’d lost both in time and in memory . . .
    Lilly squeezed my shoulder, giving me the strength to shake off the feeling. I glanced back to thank her, but saw that her touch had actually been to keep herself standing. Her eyes were trembling, the white skull light dancing in them. She wasn’t looking at Paul.
    My gaze returned to the skull. Its ancient carved face grinned at us, and the person standing over it was aglow, hands on it, the white lighting up his fingers, his veins, radiating beneath his shirt. But this was Leech’s skull. Who else could be accessing it? His head was down, hair falling forward, but he was tall, broad . . .
    And screaming again.
    â€œNnnaaa!” His head snapped up, jaw clenched, eyes squinted shut, white light making his own skull glow out through his skin.
    I heard Lilly’s gasp.
    Evan’s hands popped free of the skull as if a magnet had repelled them, and he staggered back, panting, the light fading from his skin. Evan, who’d saved us in EdenWest. Who’d said, on the raft before that, that we were lucky to be in Camp Eden, who’d suggested working together with Paul. Now, he was, but this didn’t look like the partnership he’d imagined.
    The skull stayed aglow.
    Come home, Kael, it called to me again.
    â€œDid it work?” Paul asked. He checked his watch. “We’re in a hurry.”
    Evan nodded weakly. “Yeah.” He doubled over and vomited on the floor.
    I tapped Lilly’s shoulder and motioned at Francine with my eyes. We’d have the element of surprise if we moved right now.