The sound in the room was like a vacuum, sucking the air out of Amina's lungs. Tunde's body flickered one moment he was the man in the damp singlet, the next he was a translucent shell of silver light. The Void-Seeker's hand was buried deep in his chest, pulling out a pulsating, jagged crystal that bled liquid starlight.
"Stop!" Amina screamed. She tried to lung forward, but her feet felt like they were set in concrete. The frost from the Seeker's presence had locked her to the floorboards.
"You are a Bridge with no anchors, girl," the Seeker sneered, his silver eyes glowing with a cold, metallic triumph. "You cling to this 'Mowe' life like a drowning person clings to a piece of rotten wood. Let go. Let him die, and maybe I will let you live as a slave in the Void."
Tunde's eyes rolled back. His voice was a pathetic, dying rasp. "Amina... run... just go..."
Even now, while his soul was being ripped out like a weed from a garden, he was trying to protect her. He wasn't a High Alchemist. He wasn't a King. He was just Tunde the man who complained about the generator but always made sure she had the only working fan in the house when the heat was too much.
The Alchemist told me to kill the woman who stirred the jollof rice, Amina thought. He said she was too weak.
But looking at Tunde's pale, sweating face, Amina realized the Alchemist was wrong. The woman from Mowe wasn't weak. She was the only one who actually loved the man on the floor.
"I won't let go," Amina whispered.
"What?" the Seeker hissed, his hand jerking as the Star-Core resisted.
"I said, I won't let go!" Amina roared.
She didn't reach for the blue flame this time. She didn't reach for the Aether. Instead, she reached for the memory of the jasmine petal the cold, hard reality of it. She reached for every frustration, every bill, every long walk to the junction. She turned her mundane, "boring" life into a weapon.
She bit her own tongue until she tasted copper. The sharp, iron tang of blood human blood was like a lightning bolt through the room.
The frost on her boots shattered.
Amina moved. It wasn't the graceful movement of a goddess; it was the desperate, messy lunge of a wife. She tackled the Void-Seeker, her fingers digging into his charcoal coat.
As she touched him, the "Human" in her collided with the "Void" in him.
Screeeeee!
The Seeker let out a sound that wasn't a scream it was the sound of glass grinding against glass. Where Amina's blood-stained fingers touched him, his smoke-like body began to boil and crack.
"Blood?" the Seeker gasped, recoiling. "You would use mortal filth to taint the Aether?"
"It's not filth," Amina hissed, her eyes turning a fierce, dark brown not gold, not silver, but the color of the earth. "It's my life."
She grabbed Tunde's hand.
The moment their fingers locked, the Star-Core snapped back into Tunde's chest like a rubber band. The shockwave blew out the rest of the monitors in the room. Mama B and Okoro slumped to the floor as the freezing pressure finally lifted.
The Seeker stumbled back toward the broken door, his form flickering. "You have delayed the inevitable. The Star-Core is now 'Live.' You can't stay in this world anymore, Amina. Every breath you take here will now burn the air around you."
He vanished into the night, leaving behind nothing but the smell of ozone and the sound of Tunde's gasping breaths.
Amina fell to her knees, holding Tunde. The room was dark, but they were both glowing. A soft, steady blue light radiated from their skin, illuminating the ruins of the Ikeja safe house.
"Amina?" Tunde whispered, his voice steady for the first time. He looked at his hands, then at her. "I remember. I remember the bridge. I remember... three hundred years."
He looked at her, and for the first time in a decade, he didn't look like a man worried about his boss or his bank account. He looked at her like she was the only thing in the universe.
"But I still remember the rice," he smiled weakly. "It was burnt, wasn't it?"
Amina laughed, tears finally breaking through. "Completely black, Tunde. Completely black."
Okoro groaned, pushing himself up from the floor. He looked at the glowing couple and then at the wreckage of his base. He pulled out his radio, his face grim.
"Headquarters? This is Okoro. The Bridge is fully manifested. We are past the 'Observation' phase. Initiate Protocol 'Sunfall.' We're moving them to the Lagos Lagoon. Now."