End by Odette C. Bell

Author:Odette C. Bell [Bell, Odette C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Science Fiction, Adventure, Space Opera
Amazon: B00OYWGWFM
Goodreads: 23474375
Publisher: eBook
Published: 2014-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Cadet Nida Harper

She wasn’t entirely sure what she was doing.

She wasn’t entirely sure what she could do.

She simply knew this was wrong.

Some part of her could appreciate Carson and the rest of the Coalition Academy had a point. An incredibly important one. They could not risk the Coalition with all of its countless worlds and trillions of people on the slim hope of saving the Vex.

Especially when it wasn’t clear there was any way to save the Vex.

To them, the conclusion was clear.

To her, it was murder.

The Vex deserved better. They deserved better, she kept repeating in her head as she clutched her left hand tighter and tighter. Soon her fingers wouldn’t just push through the flesh and draw blood, but likely punch all the way through the bone too.

She didn’t care though.

This was so wrong.

The Vex hadn’t asked for the entity to push through and damage their timeline. They hadn’t asked to live through countless iterations of their history, only to be obliterated time and time again.

They hadn’t asked to be turned into a race hell-bent on survival, manipulated into being the coldest, most brutal, most efficient creatures they could become.

It had simply happened to them.

And now they would be destroyed.

You could argue that would be putting them out of their misery. It wouldn’t though. The only way to save the Vex would be to fix their timeline and repair the damage that had been done.

At first she’d hoped Carson understood that. Now she realized he didn’t.

All he was thinking about was the Coalition.

A part of her understood that of course that was the case. Yet the rest of her, the part that understood how guilty the entity felt, it couldn’t accept this.

There had to be another way.

She found herself wandering through the corridors in a daze.

Though she was still aware of the entity’s presence, it was no longer close to taking her over. Though she’d endured a brief episode with Carson, she was once again in full control.

In fact, if anything, what had occurred in Carson’s office meant she had even more control than before.

For the entity was giving up. She could feel it receding within her. As it realized what the Coalition was going to do, it surrendered to hopelessness.

She barely had to concentrate to control it anymore.

Perhaps she should have celebrated at that fact, she couldn’t. It simply made her sad.

This whole thing was so terribly sad.

Though she’d joined the Coalition Academy on the premise she could go out there into the galaxy and make a difference, she now realized the emotional cost that often brought.

Solutions weren’t always easy, peaceful, and nice. You didn’t always have the luxury of choosing between two distinct options, one of which was moral and decent, the other of which was obviously abhorrent.

Sometimes, like now, you found yourself choosing between two different versions of Hell.

Though Carson kept trying to tell her she wasn’t the worst recruit in 1000 years, and Nida had started to believe him, now she wasn’t so sure.

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