HOPE’S FAREWELL
Hope came to her that night.
The child was different now — taller, its light brighter, its voice clearer. It had been helping the sleepers heal, traveling back and forth between the forgotten prison and the surface, carrying memories and messages and hope.
“Remy. I have to go.”
“I know.”
“The sleepers need me. The healing is not finished. It may never be finished. But I can help. I can be the bridge.”
“You’ve already been the bridge. You’ve already done so much.”
“There is more to do. There is always more to do.”
Remy knelt in front of the child.
“What will you become? When the healing is done?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps I will become a star. Perhaps I will become a memory. Perhaps I will become nothing at all.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
Remy hugged her.
Hope hugged her back.
“Thank you. For saving me. For believing in me. For being my mother, even though I am not human.”
“You’re more human than most humans I know.”
The child smiled.
Then it faded.
The light dimmed.
And Hope was gone.
Remy sat alone in the Memory Den, surrounded by shelves of memories, by the echoes of voices, by the ghosts of the past.
She didn’t cry.
She didn’t pray.
She just sat.
And remembered.
THE SLEEPER’S GIFT
The sleepers sent a messenger a week later.
Not a human. Not a ghost. A creature of light and shadow, with a voice that sounded like wind through crystals.
“Remy Vasquez. The sleepers have chosen you.”
“Chosen me for what?”
“To receive their gift. The gift of their memories. All of them. Everything they have learned in their ten thousand years of dreaming.”
“I don’t want it.”
“It is not a matter of wanting. It is a matter of necessity. You are the witness. You carry the weapon. You are the bridge between the dead and the living.”
“I’m just a thief.”
“You are more. You have always been more.”
The creature extended a hand.
Remy took it.
The memories flooded into her — not painfully, but gently, like waves washing over sand. She saw the sleepers’ world. Their dying star. Their desperate flight. Their arrival on Mars. Their discovery of the Warden. Their creation of the Devourer. Their long, slow slide into hunger and fear and forgetting.
She saw their regret. Their shame. Their hope.
She saw everything.
When it was over, she was lying on the floor of the Memory Den, gasping for breath.
Juno was beside her, holding her hand.
“Remy. What happened?”
“The sleepers gave me their memories. All of them.”
Juno’s face went pale. “That’s impossible. The human mind can’t hold that much.”
“I’m not entirely human anymore. Not since the weapon.”
“What do you remember?”
Remy closed her eyes.
“Everything.”