Negative Film

by Leonard Petracci

  In the distance, I caught sight of the dots that were the tigers just as Arial and Lucio merged back with the group. Throwing a black orb in the air, I let it explode, unspooling the light in a flash aimed at them, watching as Darian floated upwards to take Lucio and Arial turned, flying towards me at full speed as I fell. I prepared two more orbs while focusing on the crater far below, searching for movement as I fed them sunlight and hid them in the pocket above my wrist.

  I pushed the thoughts of the approaching ground from my head as I saw Arial’s dive deepen, and instead working to intensify the force point above me. While it could not pull me upwards, it did pull the air, providing a slight lift to slow me down. Realistically, it contributed only a few miles per hour, but every second counted. Perhaps every millisecond.

  I braced for impact as the tree branches reached up towards me, eager to impale me like spheres, just as Arial and I collided, her force carrying me more sideways than upwards. My descent slowed as she wrapped her arms around me, straining upwards with labored breath but still approaching the jungle far too quickly. We crashed through the canopy, twigs snapping and leaves showering down, then emerged upwards as my toes grazed the ground, scratches etched along our arms and faces from the escape.

  Arial shook, though if it was for the effort or from the close call I could not tell, and we continued to climb, soaring just above the crater I had created. And at the edge, where roots snaked upwards and rocks scattered like birdseed, something moved. Something that glittered.

  “Down!” I shouted, pointing, but Arial shook her head.

  “I just saved you!” she answered, her eyebrows raised. “And you’re in no shape to fight.”

  “Down!” I repeated and started squirming out of her grip, trying to drop on my own. “While they’re stunned!”

  “Stop that; you’re way too high. Stop, I swear, or I’ll—”

  She was cut off as I escaped and fell thirty feet before she caught me again. But this time, the momentum was enough to bring me to the ground, Arial pulling just hard enough that we landed at a speed slightly above a sprint. I turned, sprinting towards the crater, feeling anger well up deep inside me for the man who had not only tried to kill me, but all of my friends.

  And when I prepared the two dark orbs I had stored above my wrists for battle, they were filled not only with sunlight and leaves and air, but also with rage.

  Chapter 76

  Tigers roared in the distance as the others approached, but I crashed forwards without waiting, ripping vines and saplings aside that blocked my way, hunting for movement on the edge of the crater among the green of ferns, the brown of bark, the blue of sky.

  And seeing the glitter of a figure moving rapidly towards me.

  I threw a dislodged orb from above my wrist, arcing it at Blake as he rushed forwards, slamming all my force behind it with a grunt. He leapt sideways, his fingers digging deep into the side of a tree as he scaled it easily, splintering the wood as it fell shredded to the earth. My second orb carved straight through the trunk, eliminating a full foot of tree, collapsing it in upon itself as it toppled. Like a cat, he jumped to the next tree, leering at me a he scrambled for a hold.

  “Learned some new tricks?” he shouted, cackling, his eyes on fire and cheeks flushed. “You’ll need more than that! Can’t break diamond, but you, you’re soft.”

  But I’d never released the orb that cut down the tree, and it boomeranged back towards him, pulling a wake of rotting leaves behind it. He twitched as he heard the rustling, then somersaulted towards the ground, barely dodging the orb as he tucked into a ball of diamond that dented the earth. He howled as the orb exploded, and I started preparing another, my throat tight as I expended the effort. Never before had I exerted so much of my power in such a short time span, and it felt thin, space itself resisting my call to fall in upon itself despite the amount of material available to feed it.

  As he stood, he held one hand in front of him, his entire body still diamond, transparent to the core and casting rainbows about his feet. In full diamond, his expression was unreadable besides being hard, but I heard his joints grating as he quivered, staring at the side of his hand where a small half moon of diamond had been carved away.

  “Impossible,” he managed to say, his voice sounding as if it were blowing through a canyon. “Nothing, nothing is harder than diamond.” His voice was stunned, but I heard something else there for the first time, something expressed by the fragility of the words. Of diamond turned to glass. Fear.

  “You’ll pay!” he shouted and started to charge just as I brought the next orb to life. I waited for him to get closer, aiming right at his chest as he flexed ten razor sharp fingers. Ready to blast a hole straight through his heart.

  Then green turned to red as a blast of fire illuminated the jungle from within the crater, and I ducked backwards, sheltering beyond the edge as a wall of fire rolled upwards, spilling over like a wave on a breaker. My already burned skin screamed as the fire turned to a vortex, falling into the orb as it was consumed it with a voracity. But a second bout of flames were following the first, and Blake still charged.

  Throw the orb, and I’d lose my protection of the fire. Keep it, and Blake would slice clean through me with a single slash.

  Instead, I generated a force point, yanking the tree that had fallen behind Blake forwards. When I could barely hear his breath, it crashed into him, lifting him off his feet and throwing him above me, sending him crashing like a bowling ball deep into the vegetation beyond with enough force to keep him bouncing a full ten seconds. More fire welled up again, close this time, and I whipped around to see Lacit’s fireball henchman advancing forwards, feeding more heat into my orb with each step.

  And beside him, a tombstone-like mound of stone and earth shifted. I should have noticed it when I first arrived— it was too spherical, too smooth to be in nature. Too unblemished to be at the edge of the crater. A thin crack propagated down its center, just as I finished preparing a second orb, lashing out to send it rippling through the flame and into the center of the egg. But a hand exploded out, stopping the orb just before it reached the dirt, holding it captive as the rest of the debris fell away and Lacit emerged.

  Despite my fury at seeing him alive, I smiled as I saw a trickle of blood from his left ear, and a dark spot starting to gather around his eye.

  “You caught me by surprise, and for that, I applaud you,” he said as Sparky left the egg behind him, and I heard Blake finally come to a rolling stop in the distance. “Few can say the same. Even fewer who live. Now, no need to be up in arms. We’re all civilized people of power here, are we not?” With a glance, the fire stopped, and we stood in silence apart from Blake starting to make his way back to the crater, cursing as he bounded through trees.

  “Don’t talk to me about civilized,” I answered, gritting my teeth. “And I should have ended you while I had the chance.”

  He threw back his head and laughed, as the air around Sparky started to fizzle with small discharges. “Had the chance? You never had the chance. There are only two types of people that are headed to the grave.”

  He held up his hand, flicking down his index and middle finger as he named them.

  “One, those who stand in my way. And two, those not powerful enough to stand in my way.

  “The weak, then? You’re killing all the weak? I heard what happened to your father, just like that?”

  His face contorted, and the jungle shifted, the trees shivering and the leaves dancing.

  “My father died because he could neither defend himself or me,” he hissed. “Why let others live the same pain? Why live in a world where the powerful live on the pain of the defenseless? There will always be the powerful, but why should there always be the weak?”

  “You can’t just eliminate them. That’s, that’s insane,” I stuttered, my eyes widening as I stepped back.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I can. It’s natural selection, it’s our species moving for
wards. Name a metric that doesn’t increase when its lowest performers are removed. It's impossible.”

  Behind me, Blake grew louder. And behind Lacit, I heard the voices that could only be his reinforcements as he continued speaking.

  “Which makes it a shame that we must remove some of the highest.”

  He pointed, and the jungle moved inwards, the trees bending to point like spear tips towards me. Blake came so close behind me that I could make out each footstep. Fire started to well up again, and electricity crackled.

  With a scream, I let the orb in front of Lacit explode, but it was already too late— Blake was upon me, the other powers had been unleashed, and his palm absorbed the energy hurled in his direction. But above, I heard a voice, Arial’s voice, shouting as she dive bombed me with another figure in her arms.

  “There! Do it now!”

  Then her body crashed into mine, joining me at the center of destruction.

  And we entered a world of silence and darkness.

  Chapter 77

  I shivered, my sweat turning cold, a frigid breeze drifting across my face, my hands still held up in front of me in defense from the coming blows. The dark orbs I had created were gone, cut off from me as if by a surgeon’s scalpel— but so too was the vortex of flame, lightning, diamond, and telekinesis. Instead, it felt like there was nothing but space itself, until my pupils widened large enough for me to see my surroundings as my heart rate slowed.

  Arial still held me in gliding flight, and we coasted to a stop, touching down as she dropped Lola as well. Around us were the rest of our group— a dazed Lucio, the others intact, and a missing tiger, all strangely quiet as if they were afraid to speak. And beyond, there was only wasteland.

  Brown grass and thickets stretched in every direction, with sparse skeletons of long dead trees raising high above them, their branches upheld in a curse. Above, the sky was black— but it was a blackness that seemed to shine down on us, not stealing light away but actively suppressing it from a black sun, like a lid putting out a candle. Where there had been life in the jungle, where the parrots had flown from tree to tree, the bugs had swarmed, the monkeys chattered, and the snakes hissed, here there was nothing. Only stillness.

  Lola raised a finger to her lips, speaking in a voice so quiet it was barely a whisper, but in contrast to the world sounded like a loudspeaker.

  “As a last resort, we have escaped to the other side. Make no sound, speak no words. We must move with all haste. If you see anyone, anything, freeze. Now follow me.”

  “You almost got yourself killed,” hissed Arial before she turned her back in a swish of curls.

  For a moment, anger swept over me, the rage still hot in my blood from the fight. Right now, in the real world, Lacit and his crew had escaped— they would be free to hunt us down again. It was time to stop them, to protect the others. To eliminate the threat. As Zeke had said, prey need not fear hurting the predator.

  But if I hunted them down now, which would I be?

  I gritted my teeth as Lola swept forwards, realizing that without her, I would be unable to return whether or not I felt it was right. Her feet avoided anything that might rustle or snap, small clouds of dust raising with each footstep, the mud beneath cracked and flaking. And in resignation I followed, pushing my feelings away, then stopped, realizing that one of us was missing. And I turned to see Zeke sinking to the ground, his hands clasping over his knees, his eyes so wide they appeared eclipsed by white. He neither rocked nor spoke, but simply sat there frozen, the vein in his neck bulging, his stare focused on only one thing.

  His missing finger.

  A whine escaped his throat, high-pitched like a motor under too much stress, and Lola tensed, whirling around to dash over and clasp a hand over his throat. She looked left and right, her eyes scanning the horizon, and hissing at Darian.

  “Stop it,” she commanded, taking Zeke’s shoulders and shaking them. “Stop it!”

  She slapped him across the face, using the back of her hand to avoid a clap, but Zeke looked past her as if she were invisible.

  “Not here,” he whispered between the wines. “Not here. Danger in the darkness.”

  “Do something,” she said. “Or I’ll have to send him back.”

  “I don’t know—” started Darian, but then he wheeled on Lucio, dragging him over by the arm. “Lucio, happy memories, just like we gave to SC when he was nutty. Calm him down or we’re in trouble. Movies.”

  “Happy movies? The man likes danger; what exactly do you want me to do? Broadcast him tarantulas? Scorpion city? There’s barely any semblance of thought there already.”

  “Something! Lucio, I know you’ve got the director skills. Put them to work. This film counts!”

  “A show!” he whispered, the light returning to his eyes for the first time since he had been thrown off Lilac. “Yes, I can put on a show!”

  He placed a hand on either side of Zeke’s head, just an inch from the surface, chewing the side of his lip as wrinkles appeared on his forehead. His eyes closed, and Zeke’s voice gradually started to recede, from a whine to a buzz, then a nearly inaudible rumble.

  “Just walkin’ in the jungle, doing jungle-y things,” cooed Lucio, bobbing from side to side with each syllable. “Come on, up, just walkin’ through the jungle. Lola, can we fly? I’ve got him in the illusion, but I don’t know how long it will hold. Once it’s shattered, I’ve lost him, and without knowing him well, there’s a lot of guesswork in the genre.”

  He nudged Zeke and the man stood, his eyes still closed, and Lucio guided him forwards. One slow step at a time he moved, Lucio adjusting the live stream of memories to help him avoid obstacles, like a puppet master pulling the strings.

  “No flying; it’s too easy to be seen,” she said and turned to walk again. “And no more talking. If anyone were nearby, we surely would have been heard by now. We walk two hours this way, far enough to make sure he won’t catch us.”

  “Unless Lacit has a Transient also in his employ, then he would just follow us here,” said Darian, speeding up to catch up to her and match her footsteps. “Then we’d be in even worse trouble.”

  “I assure you, he doesn’t,” she answered, though she looked back to the space where we had arrived. “If any other Transients found out another was taking people to the other side, they’d be long dead by now.”

  Chapter 78

  In our own world, dusk approached. But here, the ground began to shimmer, giving off the same off-white color of the full moon, and the darkness in the sky above was replaced by a pervasive grey. The light illuminated thorny brambles fighting for purchase over the soil, and stone wove rivers through the earth, curving sections that raised like uneven platforms and wobbled unsteadily under footsteps. Each sound seemed to stretch forever across the barren landscape, the going felt exposed— shelter was rare, and the dark sun peered at us as an angry eye on the horizon.

  Our progress was slow as we shivered, our clothes inadequate for the near freezing temperatures. Zeke was easily the bottleneck of the group, and every few minutes, Lucio stopped to rest, still dazed from the impact. Lola had checked his pupils and ran a hand over his head, announcing that he probably did not have a concussion, but heavily emphasized the word probably.

  But even without the two of them, the rest of us struggled forwards— for Arial, the exertion of flying an entire day combined with saving multiple people from freefall. For me, pushing my powers farther than they had ever gone before, combined with the whiplash I felt from being launched into the sky. Then for Darian, Slugger, and Lola, a full day of riding left them just slightly better than the rest. Even the tigers appeared downtrodden, plodding forwards to follow where Arial led them onwards, and one growled at me when I approached to speak with her. Among them, Lilac was missing, having dropped from the sky like a helicopter seed, and their shoulders slumped in mourning. Lucio in particular appeared downtrodden, and kept casting hopeful glances behind us for a flash of orange, though he k
new the thought to be beyond optimistic.

  “Lola? Lola, there, what’s that?” Darian said, his voice hushed, and nodding to a distant hilltop. I squinted, looking as what appeared to be a small tree swaying in the wind. But there was no wind, and on closer inspection, it was no tree.

  “No, no, no,” Lola breathed, then turned to us as a chill shot through me. “Time to go. Arial, you and the tigers first, move slowly. Make sure you’re touching each of them. I’ve never moved this much mass; it’s going to be slow.”

  She held out her hand to Arial, then pushed the small of her back as she turned transparent, fading from view like a ghost. Each of the cats around her slid into nothingness as well, and in a moment, they were gone. And since the ground was stone, not even footprints testified they had ever been there.

  “Slugger, you next,” she said with a tap of her finger as he too disappeared. “And, SC, help hold Zeke up. This might meddle with Lucio’s power. Lucio, you ready?”

  “Doing my best, giving our man here the time of his life,” said Lucio, his voice thin.

  “Okay, on three. One, two, three!” she said, her voice strained as well, and the scene disappeared around us as if we were entering a blizzard, patches of our world intermingling with the other side. For a moment, we hung between them, nearly stuck before exiting, and a sharp cry left Zeke’s throat as Lucio lost his hold for an instant. Then the figure on the hilltop turned, and I heard a long, pure note before departure.