Boundless

by Damien Boyes

  “What’s Thrane doing?” I ask. “Gibzon said it was a black hole to keep them out, but I’m not sure.”

  “This is something far more exotic than a black hole,” Grackle answers, and for the first time since we jumped through the bubble he looks scared. “This is a tunnel. A breach between universes. Can you not feel it, calling from the other side? The ancient hunger?”

  Now that he mentions it, I do. There’s an emptiness. A hollowness in my gut that wants nothing more than to feed until the only thing left to eat is myself. And even with the stream of energy pouring into it, it’s a hunger that can never be satisfied.

  “Thrane is transferring energy from this universe into his,” Grackle says. “Feeding on us, like a parasite.”

  He isn’t a conqueror, he’s a thief—a very old, very entitled thief, and he needs to be stopped. “So how do we shut it down?”

  “You don’t,” a booming voice whispers in my ear. I know that voice. I spin, wards extended, expecting the inky man to be behind me, his whips ready to lash out and disintegrate me, but no one’s there.

  Grackle nudges me and gestures up with his head, and there he is, Dhemant—his bare feet dangling in the air, hands clasped behind his back, with the dark skin of his chest glistening under a robe the color of dried blood—hovering between us and the warped portal to another universe.

  37

  The Order of Death

  Dhemant cocks his head at us and squints like he’s appraising inept students.

  “Welcome back, children,” he says, and the way he smiles sends a shiver down my spine. “Come for another lesson?”

  I feel my hands burn with energy and want to fry that black-toothed smile right off his face, but I hold myself back. That’s exactly what he wants.

  I muster all the menace I can and say, “Move, or we go through you.”

  Dhemant’s moon-bright irises swing to me and his smile grows larger as he raises a long finger. “Today’s class is on the appreciation of death,” he says. “We’ve already established your proficiency with the subject. I’m eager to push your understanding even further.” His gaze slides to Grackle. “Will you be participating today, or would you prefer to simply watch her die, like last time she was here?” He holds his hands out. “I leave that choice to you.”

  Grackle’s been here before. With the other Jasmin.

  He flicks a look at me, checking for my reaction, and just as quickly looks away, his face a mask. This is what he’s been hiding. Grackle must have come with her and froze up, or ran. He did it before, back in Buffalo when the fighting got bad, he just bailed. But after what he said about being the last of his people, the last evidence of a forgotten world, I get why.

  I think I have it rough. I lost my world, but not all of it, not even most of it, just the sliver that meant the most to me. Grackle lost his species, his entire timestream. If he truly is the last link to his world in the chronoverse, then how can I ask him to give that up? I don’t know how the other me reacted, but I’m not going to ask him to sacrifice that for me.

  “It’s okay, Grak,” I say. “I know she understood.”

  “No,” Grackle says, his jaw tight but his lips trembling. “If Thrane succeeds, all universes will be lost. I cannot allow that.” He inhales deeply and his body seems to lengthen. His muscles swell, splitting his suit to shreds, and his fingers thicken to claws. My back hums as my body draws energy from the suit’s batteries, compensating for the power Grackle is sucking from the air. “Stand aside,” he says, and his reedy voice has crumbled to gravel.

  Dhemant’s eyes widen as Grackle’s nose thickens to a snout and his mouth widens into a toothy snarl, but only for an instant, then he laughs and claps his hands.

  “Wonderful,” Dhemant says. “I had forgotten the fresh taste of novelty. And so, the lesson begins—” Before the word has left his lips he’s flung his hands out and two long iridescent black tentacles are flying toward Grackle, who hasn’t moved. This is what happened to Tau—those whips will cut right through him.

  I whip a spear of energy out at Dhemant but it’s too late, his whips lash around Grackle’s midsection and sizzle off the green light of Grackle’s wards, but instead of slicing through they just keep right on sizzling.

  Grackle reaches out and grabs the glowing cables and Dhemant’s face is so screwed up in confusion I can’t help but whoop.

  Still holding the whips, Grackle spins in a one-eighty and swings Dhemant through the air, crashing him into the supports along the tower’s external wall, and the tentacles dissipate.

  The building shudders as a stretch of girders gives way and collapses. The whole place groans as the obelisk’s massive weight shifts. “I’ll distract him,” Grackle growls. “Find a way to deactivate the singularity.”

  “How’d you do that?” I ask. He’s turned from a timid weakling to the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m glad he’s on my side.

  “As I said, I’ve had years to practice,” he says with a toothy grin and launches himself in a blur after Dhemant, lustrous energy pouring from his fists.

  Grackle’s got Dhemant handled. Now I need to figure out how to take that singularity out. I know there’s no use in trying to blast it, it’s sucking up more energy than I could possibly throw at it, and I sure don’t want to get too close to it—who knows what would happen. I’d probably be stretched out into spaghetti.

  The building quakes again and I turn to see Grackle and Dhemant tossing energy at each other—and then I’ve got it. Delta said as much during the briefing. I don’t have to take down the singularity—I can take down the entire building.

  I probably don’t even need to bring the building down. If I can shift the tip of the power conduit just enough to knock it out of alignment and stop the feeding, maybe that will destabilize the breach. Maybe?

  Beats me, but it’s the only idea I have.

  The battery on my back hums as it feeds me power. Grackle and Dhemant’s fight is consuming everything else from the space around us. They’re beating on each other, grim-faced and bloody. Blood stains what remains of Grackle’s tweed pants, while bright black-violet streams run from triple slashes across Dhemant’s naked chest, like he’s bleeding space itself. Their wards are down, and while they’re still flying they’ve resorted to fighting hand to hand, and Dhemant is tiring.

  Grackle’s winning, and luckily, for whatever reason, neither Thrane nor Einarr is here to help.

  Grackle’s bought me a shot, I need to move. I blink down to just below the mouth of the conduit and try to shove it, but can’t get it to move more than a few inches, and that doesn’t accomplish anything. The energy just keeps right on flowing, roaring out the end to be sucked into the rift above. If the Midtown shields were down and I had access to the power outside, I could probably fly right through the cable, but I don’t have the time to figure out how Thrane’s producing the bubble, let alone how to shut it down.

  No, I need to do this now.

  I zip back from the conduit and fly a circle around the inside of the building, arms out, gaining speed until I’m moving as fast as I can. My suit sends a warning through my earworms, ten percent battery reserve, and I know I’ll only get one chance at this.

  Grackle and Dhemant are slowing down, the ambient negative energy in the air around us nearly drained. If it weren’t for the battery on my back keeping me powered I’d have dropped from the sky already. I don’t know how they’re still flying, let alone still pounding on each other.

  Dhemant scowls in frustration and tries to lash another weak whip around Grackle’s neck, but Grackle dodges, grabs the whip, and launches his fist into a glowing fastball punch that catches Dhemant full in the face. Grackle continues his momentum and wraps his leathery arm around Dhemant’s neck in a headlock.

  “Now, Jasmin Parker,” Grackle calls out, his voice ragged with exhaustion.

  Five percent battery, my suit tells me. Now or never.

  I give it everything I have, one last
burst of strength, bunch up what energy I can manage for a ward in front of me and curve until I’m spinning tight toward the power conduit, like a satellite falling from orbit.

  I hit the surface and it feels like the moment I first got my powers, except this time the truck makes it through my shield and crumples into me. There’s a roar like an erupting volcano and I’m sent tumbling, senseless, careen off a support beam and luckily a few seconds later land on something. Air is rushing around me, and the static haze of a dead radio station turned up to a million fills my head.

  The noise is deafening, and everything hurts, but I don’t have time to baby myself. Instead I roll and see the blaze of white energy streaming through the side of the building and out into the sky.

  I dented the cable, just enough to kink it and divert the beam away from the vortex, but now the blazing white light is flailing wildly, a thick rope of pure negative energy whipping around and slashing through the tower’s structure, bringing the building down around us.

  Then the beam convulses, doubles over on itself, lashes down and slices into the conduit. There’s a screeching shudder as the tip of the cable erupts in a phosphorescent blaze, and then the energy rope cuts off with an electric snap. Something explodes deep below us, and the whole tower quakes.

  Without the energy pouring into it, the vortex ball quivers and starts to shrink. Grackle has Dhemant immobilized in a choke hold from behind, but the Remnant seems resigned to watch Thrane’s plans come apart.

  “What’s most gratifying,” Dhemant says in a hoarse whisper, “is you think you’ve succeeded.” His black-toothed grin spreads across his face. “You’ve done nothing here. Your failure was certain the moment you arrived.”

  “Doesn’t look like failure to me,” I yell back.

  We did it, but I’m surprised Thrane didn’t come. No way we could have won had he showed up. He got cocky and lost.

  There’s another explosion somewhere and then another and my chest swells with satisfaction as the bubble around Midtown pops. My body burns as it’s flooded by the condensed negative energy that pours in to fill the vacuum.

  Without the shield supporting Midtown’s weight, the ground collapses and Thrane’s tower plummets around us as the formerly cradled slice of Manhattan sinks onto foundations that have long since crumbled.

  Then Dhemant springs to life. Energized by the power flooding into his body, he explodes out of Grackle’s grasp, spins and flings two black tentacles at me. They move faster than I can think, wrapping around my midsection, and even though my wards are protecting me, the heat is fierce.

  I try to blink out of Dhemant’s grasp but can’t. The tentacles have me locked in place. His eyes narrow as his whips sear me, burning through my failing wards, but Grackle streaks across and pounds into Dhemant’s side, knocking him toward the shrinking vortex, and I’m pulled along with them.

  “Grackle!” I yell as I feel the heat intensify. Even with the power surrounding me I can’t hold the whips back much longer.

  Grackle doesn’t hesitate. He dashes forward with claws raised, concentrated green energy rippling at their tips, and rips straight through Dhemant’s wards and into his guts. Black blood sprays from Dhemant’s abdomen, and his stoic expression cracks into a grimace.

  The tentacles disappear and Grackle flips in the air and kicks off against Dhemant, knocking the bleeding Remnant toward the unstable vortex. Dhemant’s growl thunders in my chest as he’s caught in the singularity’s sucking gravitational maw. His eyes fill with pain as his feet are stretched out, pulled into strings spiraling down into the singularity, but the second before he’s swallowed up he lashes out with one last black tentacle and catches Grackle around the leg.

  Grackle’s eyes widen in fear and we lock eyes for one terrible moment and then Dhemant is sucked away, pulling Grackle with him.

  “Grak!” I yell, but it’s already too late. He hits the distortion and his face freezes in a terrified scream. I have a long, horrible second to watch pain grip his face before his body stretches out like taffy and then he’s gone.

  An instant later the sphere collapses in on itself and explodes in a dazzling burst that knocks me back through the building, and by the time I’ve stopped tumbling and recover my senses, I’m hovering over the East River.

  The singularity is down and Gibzon can jump the rest of the team in … but Grackle is gone.

  My loop comes to life. I’m about to signal Gibzon to start the jump when his voice calls out through my earpiece.

  “Jasmin,” he says, his voice vibrating. “Come back. We need you immediately.”

  “The singularity is down,” I answer back. “You can jump here now.”

  “You’re too late,” Gibzon says. “Thrane’s invasion began hours ago. He’s already breached our True Line and his entanglers are in place. We’ve failed.”

  38

  True Lines

  “That’s not possible,” I say into the loop, staring out across the crumbled Midtown. “We took the singularity down, just like you said.”

  When the shield collapsed the city sunk and most of the buildings toppled over. The golden obelisk is still standing, but barely. It’s leaning over at an angle that can’t hold for long. I spin and look at the entangler tower in Jersey. There’s no sign that anything at all is happening.

  No sign—but I can feel a difference. There used to be a resistance, something preventing me from jumping further ahead in time, but that’s gone now. This timeline has slipped into the past. The present is now somewhere in my future.

  “Thrane must have acted the moment you jumped there, stopped artificially propping up that timeline and let it drop from the stream,” Gibzon says in my ear. “Yes, you destroyed the singularity, but only in that world, a timeline no longer connected to the present. Thrane’s timestream is still protected, and his invasion force is laying waste to our world. Sigma and Tau have fallen. Gamma isn’t responding. Only Alpha and Delta remain in contact. This may be the end.”

  No. It can’t be. I won’t let it. I won’t let Grackle die have died for nothing.

  I turn and throw myself toward the tall tower in Jersey. “Alpha and Delta have their entanglers under control?” I ask as the river passes under me.

  “For now,” Gibzon replies. “They’re in Thrane’s timeline now, jumped through the hard portals when they opened to let the entanglers through, but without a third to complete the inversion process, their efforts are for naught.”

  “I’m heading to the Jersey entangler now. If I can get you access, can we still flip Thrane’s switch?”

  “Yes,” Gibzon responds in my ear, “but you’re in the wrong timeline.”

  “Not for long,” I say, and launch myself into the future. The world blurs and the quiet desolation of the inactive entangler facility peels away to reveal a war in progress. The entangler is directly ahead, and beyond it a door in time and space with Gibzon’s world on the other side, and the second entangler already moved through the shimmering hole into Gibzon’s Jersey. I can’t tell much from back here, but from the looks of things, the fighting has died down and they’re ready to go. I glance over my shoulder and see the bubble over Midtown is back up. Or never went down. My stomach sinks. After everything we did …

  “Can you still hear me?” I ask Gibzon.

  “Affirmative,” he replies. “With the rifts open between our worlds we have direct communication abilities. The singularity isn’t affecting the transmission.”

  “Good. I’m going to try to get control of this entangler.”

  “We’re in touch with the Resistance on your side. Captain Fan is dead, and Chen has taken command. We’ll tell him to focus his remaining efforts on New Jersey. Perhaps hope yet exists.”

  “What do I need to do?”

  “Chen and his team have instructions for reversing the entangling process. You need to clear them a path to the control center.”

  I steel myself and flex my mind out into the power-soaked world and le
t the energy fill me, let it fuel my determination. Feeling like this, I can do anything.

  “Tell Chen and his team to jump there on my signal.”

  “Acknowledged,” Gibzon replies. Then after a second he adds, “And Jasmin, Thrane will attempt to stop you.”

  A chill simmers through my nerves, but I try to ignore it. “I’ll do my best to avoid him.”

  “No,” Gibzon answers, but his voice is taut. “For Thrane to engage with you he must limit himself to existing in one world at a time, and every second he spends out of his superposition, the quicker his captured timelines will slide out of probability and begin to fade. You must engage him. If he’s focused on you, his captured worlds will quickly disappear, and his armies with them.”

  “Got it,” is all I can say. We both know what that means. I’m not making it out of here.

  The good news is I’m almost at the entangler facility and don’t have time to freak out about fighting Thrane again. The defenses on this side of the rift are light, but they still see me coming and launch everything they have. My wards keep me protected as I swoop in and raze the black and gold armored soldiers with a stream of ultraviolet lightning, frying them and their weapons as I go. I land in a clear patch of pavement next to the tower’s entrance and take out the remaining soldiers with a sweep of energy blasts from my fists.

  Out here it’s late afternoon, but beyond the massive rift in space it’s nighttime in Gibzon’s world. Now that I’m close, I can see the fighting on the other side. Buildings are down, fires rage. The United Planet forces have responded, and they’ve got some firepower of their own, but Thrane’s forces are fighting hard to keep the territory they’ve claimed.

  “Clear,” I say, and a moment later Chen and Zhi appear beside me, each holding one side of a figure-eight translocator. My thoughts go blank, unable to process how I’m seeing them, but then I realize when I watched Chen and Zhi die it was in another timeline, on another world.