Page 428 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

No lava.

No earthquakes or floods.

It’s a single memory that brings the soft apocalypse.

He remembers.

He can see it like he’s there watching.

Lachlan wasn’t wearing the leaf necklace when he took his people to decimate Iron Star, to get Jules and Mimi back. He didn’t have it on him and yet they gave it to him when he was freed from prison.

Mimi was wearing it.

He’d given it to her because she was having nightmares. He put it around her neck.

He wasn’t wearing it.

She was.

She was wearing it when he…

lifted her lifeless body,

when grief came to destroy the earth

and left Lachlan untouched like the moon watching all that lovely blue and green

come apart in space.

She was wearing it

and she wouldn’t wake up

because she was dead.

Bullets killed her.

Bullets killed them both.

Troy Harker was still alive.

Lachlan put down his little girl.

He picked up Troy’s gun.

The weight was off.

Lachlan fired it at Troy’s face.

Bang bang,

but no damage.

He’d pulled the magazine out.

Blanks.

Troy Harker had used blanks.