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there was a time before the word 'Earth', and a planet in earth's shape was ruled by creatures called Mercora. the Mercora were kind, maybe kinder than they should've been. they offered hospitality to their murderers, to a group of unassuming wayward children.
“Thanks for saving us. ... We owe you. We owe you big. I don’t know if that concept means anything to you, but we owe you.”
The Mercora were ancient, but really they were before ancientry. And they were before laws, and debts, and whatever debt might've been was not repaid. The humans acted not to save themselves, but to save their species. Despite it all, humans choose each other, again and again. So a rock fell from the sky to and joined its kin in soil. So through the blue blood of a prehistoric species, and through its stain on the young, history was allowed to follow.
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There was a time before Aftran.
Of “See, you’ve just said the whole world can drop dead, so long as you, Cassie, don’t have to end up turning into me.”
and there was some truth to that. but there was something else too, something no one would ever speak aloud. Rachel was a weapon, and a machine, and a girl who did as she pleased. Cassie was a weapon too, and Cassie spoke up, but when it was time to follow orders she would. Cassie could stand to be ordered to kill. She did. She could not stand to kill of her own volition. It was not the blood she was worried about, but the hands it lied on. It should've been Jake- Jake whose soul was sold so the others could feel right. It was not Jake.
Cassie risked a lot to feel right again.
"Long story short, she’s a Controller now. And if we don’t haul butt we’re dog food"
she did bet the world on aftran, and she won her bet. maybe afterwards she was too enfranchised - if humanity's last hope had died with Cassie's freedom, who would she blame?
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there was a time Before David. This is important, that there were six children Before David. After David, there were still six children, except they were not really children in any meaning of the word.
Before David, things mattered only as much as they should've mattered. homework mattered because of school. species, family, blood, mattered different before then they did after.
it was Cassie again who ushered in the After David. they could not kill him, she had said. they could not kill him if they could let him live. so she divined a worse fate for him, so that she could keep blood off her hands. she did not do what was right, but what she could do for him. still, it was a means to an end, and it was not right, and they all paid with their souls to earn the right to continue selling them. All for Earth.
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there were many times when people left their insults upon Jake. once, a woman reminiscent of his mother, or certainly some mother, whispered "May God have mercy on your soul", before Jake was deemed innocent of a crime he had committed.
Merciful is not how I would describe him.
It was god who met with the devil- god who said he could not fight himself, so he would put forward fighters to do the work, and the devil agreed that innocent blood could be spilt to keep a god from breaking their rules. their arbitrary, world-shattering rules. It was god that picked his sacrificial lambs to save a world he loved.
“If there is a God, He will have to beg for my forgiveness"
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a Thousand things happened on the last day of The War. and somehow all of them happened to one family, one family that was in the wrong place at the wrong time. if Tom Berenson hadn't grown up in California, maybe he could have died old and free. but history is full of people who died for being in the wrong place, and he was not the first, and he would not be the last.
there was a time where there was a button, and a safety protocol too easily overridden, and 17,000 defenseless enemies.
“His own evil deed draws the punishment upon himself.”
there was once a thought experiment that said nuclear codes should be hidden in an innocent man's heart, so that a president might understand the weight of nuclear warfare. Jake did not himself rend chests open on the last day of The War, but the button came with a price tag indeed.
there was a battle where blood required spilling. the freshest soldiers died on the ground. easily forgettable- statistics and not tragedy. one day someone would write a book, saying "Remember the disabled children who suffered without choosing it, and protected your right to be free. You owe them Memory." and it did them no good where they were.
The leaders, the memorable fighters, did it all above the ground, raised above the soil they were raised on. And Jake knew- someone needs to die. Someone needs to sacrifice their own life to kill who must be killed. Someone Would.
there was a robot that could have saved lives, but would not do so, for it meant allowing other harm, and it meant heping Jake Berenson save someone he loved. in trying to stop harm, or maybe in enacting vengeance, or maybe in carrying it an intention a human could not divine, a robot caused great harm to a girl nobody would call innocent. and Jake said this was not Right. but he was not the authority on Rightness anymore. there was a task that needed to be done, and it was not one that could be survived.
So he aimed the greatest weapon he had, and the Earth was saved through the blood of a lamb in the shape of a bear in the shape of a girl.