She didn’t bring him here for a family reunion. She came here to end the family and secure a different finale before she left his forsaken planet.
The doors bolted, and the computer flashed red and black warning symbols. The sawed and harsh tone of the alarm systems drowned him in panic. “Let me go, mother,” he said, very carefully. “Let me go, and I’ll leave you with her.”
“My boy,” she whispered. “My sweet, sweet boy. The war has been lost. There is nowhere to run.”
“Mother.” His voice rose with urgency. “Please. Open the doors.”
“You have given a mother everything she has asked for,” she whispered.
“Mother, don’t do this,” he warned.
A glare of commanding devastation overtook her. “All of those nights alone, I waited for you to come,” she said with sudden command. “I waited, and the only one who came to me was your inbred brother, FREAK, the abhorrent beast of my most tender sickness.”
Vash ran to the center console and brought it crashing to the floor. One by one, the lights popped and sparkled into darkness. The fire sprinklers opened their menacing tentacles and drenched the room.
“Mother, we will drown! Do you still fight me?” he screamed.
He tried the door next, but it was impossible to move the handle. Taking an extinguisher in his hand, he pounded against the rusted metal. Over and over, he watched as the metal lay in sturdy. He slunk forward and let the water pour over his eyes. Focusing on the sound of his heartbeat, he let out a cry of misery.
In the middle of the chaos, he turned and looked at the sleeping faces of the copies. Vash lived a life of pain and discouragement. But if he gave up, it would mean never seeing Wren again. Without a centered pack, their children would likely experience the real end of the world.
“Nothing will ever be the same again, will it?” he whispered to himself.
Suddenly, the individual copies opened their eyes. The green and earthy colors of Wren’s iris glowed around him. She wasn’t a commodity to him anymore. She was an equal, and all he wished for was to get back to her.
“Entropy lacks God’s mercy,” his mother said. “The universe was born to eat itself.” The front of the pods opened. The cold mist of the tanks that circled around the women’s cheek and jawbones dissipated into the air.
“It is better to kill the whores than extend the timeline. Now, they can all die,” his mother hissed.
Vash ran to clutch the first copy that fell out of her tank. As she tumbled into his arms, she gasped for air through frenetic shivers. She even smelled like her.
“You can’t do this!” he screamed.
Even Vash knew how senseless that sounded. The world had fallen from the edge of uncertainty. Everyone knew the end. Fire. Brimstone. Men on steel horses fueled by the blood of the lost. They lived out the apocalypse every single day. Yet, the end would not come. Perhaps this was a blessing.
Ask of me, and I will surely give the nations as your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron. You shall shatter them like earthenware.
The omega in his arms gasped and tapped against his chest. She could not breathe. Lowering his lips, he provided air, but it wasn’t enough. Her body began pumping soundlessly, flopping like a thirsty fish. And, somehow, he felt for the copy.
“I alone can give her happiness,” she said.
He felt dizzy from hunger. Opening his mouth, he tongued at the falling water. “Mother, I’m your son,” he gasped.
“I will gift my child with death, and all the warring factions will know that I am she who searches the kidneys and hearts. I will give unto every one of you according to your works.”
Mother…
Vash felt his legs give out from underneath him. Dropping to the floor, he swayed with fatigue. She was going to kill him.
But maybe the world was better off without him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Vitals read normal. No sign of him in the pack, but he couldn’t have gone too far.”
“The ground sweep will find him.”
“You’re—you’re not a copy,” Killian exclaimed. He rocked his wrist against the set of metal handcuffs, skin now irritated from hours of trying.