Boundless

by Damien Boyes

  I extend my shields around Chen and jump us back to collect Zhi, blinking us through the rift and out into Gibzon’s world just as the entanglers finish their cycle and absorb the timeline behind us.

  We land in a bombed-out city street on the other side of the rift just as it snaps shut with a static screech, leaving the silent entangler tower and this side of the hardware used to open the door back to Thrane’s world.

  There’s still fighting going on, Thrane’s remaining soldiers battling against the military, but it’ll be a losing battle. The invasion is over.

  I don’t know where we are, and Chen won’t last long enough for me to find a hospital for him. A convoy of blue-uniformed soldiers is marching by a few hundred feet away, and Zhi and I scream “Help!” over and over and wave our arms until someone notices, and a group breaks off and sprints over to us, bounding across the heaved concrete and burned-out cars like gymnasts on spring legs. A gray sphere flies along behind them.

  “We need a medic,” I yell as the soldiers approach, and once they’re closer I see their armor is mechanized, like from a Japanese cartoon. The sphere and one of the soldiers drops immediately to Chen’s side and the soldier attends to Chen while the ’bot sprays his wounds with that silvery liquid Gamma used on Dad back in Buffalo.

  “He’ll be okay,” the soldier says, looking up at me. “But we need to get him to a medic station. How did you get here? This area was supposed to be evacuated …”

  How did I get here?

  I just shake my head. He wouldn’t believe me if I told him.

  41

  Victory

  We’re in Eternity Station, Alpha, Delta, Gamma, Gibzon, and I, standing in the conference room and watching the rescue vehicles and construction equipment zip around New York as it recovers from Thrane’s invasion. Hell’s Kitchen is still smoldering, and Midtown has looked better, but other than that the city doesn’t look too bad. Across the river, though, Jersey is a mess.

  Once I knew Chen was safe, I left Zhi with the Army and went off to help mop up the rest of the invaders. At first the soldier wasn’t going to let me leave, but I didn’t bother to argue, I just flew away while he was yelling at me to evacuate.

  Rounding the invaders up wasn’t hard—with the rifts down they mostly gave up, threw aside their weapons, and surrendered. I spent a day and a half helping the rescue effort, pulling people free from buildings and collapsed tunnels. Initially the first responders didn’t know what to make of me, this girl showing up out of the sky and moving concrete chunks around, but I guess they realized that after everything that had already happened there wasn’t much they could do to stop me, and went with it.

  The fighting wasn’t limited to Union City. Thrane’s forces opened portals all over the world, twelve different places in all: one at each pole, four over water, three in the deserts in Saudi Arabia and Australia and on the west coast of Africa, and one in the mountains of Argentina. Luckily most of them weren’t in populated areas. But in addition to Jersey, a place called Meizhou, a city of a million and a half people in southeast China, was hit as well. Thousands died, and Alpha blinked off to help the recovery there.

  By the time we found all the survivors in Jersey there wasn’t much left for me to do. Chen was rushed to a temporary medical facility floating in the Hudson, and while he hasn’t regained consciousness, he should be okay. They’re going to give him one of those robot arms to replace the one he lost, and they couldn’t promise there’d be no scarring, but he’s alive, and that’s all that matters.

  Zhi hasn’t left his side since we got here, not that she has anywhere to go. After all, this is an alien world to her. Gibzon offered her a room in Eternity Station, but she insisted on staying with Chen. I know how she feels. He’s her one connection back to her home.

  I went and visited them, and after a bit Zhi went out to find something to eat and I sat and watched Chen as his silvery-bandaged chest rose and fell, struggling to imagine what I’d say to him if he were awake and not coming up with much. I don’t think I’ve even met this version of him.

  After a while Zhi came back and the doctors said one of us had to leave, so I jumped back to Eternity Station, where at least things are quiet.

  The rest of Gibzon’s world is in chaos, not just because of the destruction, but because most of the population just discovered they live in a multiverse of worlds and now, on top of everything else, they have to worry about invaders from other timelines.

  Not to mention the time-traveling superheroes kicking around too.

  I know how everyone feels. It wasn’t long ago this was all an impossibility to me too. Nothing will be the same for them again.

  Most of the invaders surrendered, but there could be thousands of Thrane’s soldiers still on the loose, and while the military is hunting them down, Gibzon offered the services of the Omega Guard to assist. Now the world knows about them too. Gibzon, the Omega Guard, all of it. They’ve been working in secret up until now, but that’s about to change. Everything’s about to change.

  “So,” I say as stare out the window. I know New York isn’t really on the other side of the glass, but it sure feels like it is. “What now?”

  “We have a briefing with the president in two hours,” Gibzon says, turning to the Destiny Matrix. His timeline is stronger now, a thick stalagmite jutting up from the rippling foam, clearly now the dominant stream in the chronoverse. We didn’t erase Thrane’s line completely, Deadworld still exists, but without Thrane to artificially anchor it in time, it’s shrunk to a fraction of what it was.

  “The texture of the chronoverse is in flux,” Gibzon continues, motioning down to the display’s base layer. While only a few days ago budding timelines were scarce, it now looks like a garden in springtime. With the energy that had been locked up in Thrane’s streams released, the chronoverse has energy to spare and is conjuring new timelines like mad. “The spike of negative energy we released from Thrane’s timestream has sparked a flood of new timelines. New realities are blossoming across the multiverse, and while we are out of danger for now, we anticipate a surge of boundless will emerge. There is much work to be done. We will require your assistance.”

  “What about Chen?” I ask.

  Gibzon considers this for a moment. “That’s up to him, of course, he’s welcome to stay here if he chooses, but he still has a world of his own. Knowing what we do of him, now that Thrane’s gone and with the loss of Captain Fan, we’d anticipate he’ll want to return and attempt to rebuild.”

  Yeah, that sounds about right. Besides, anything that might have happened between Chen and I died ten times over. Apart from rescuing him from Deadworld, this Chen and I have never met.

  “All I know is I’m taking a vacation,” Delta says. Thrane beat him up pretty good—both his legs were shattered, but us boundless must heal pretty fast, because he’s already up and walking around. He said if I hadn’t appeared in Jersey when I did to lure Thrane away, Thrane would have finished him and he’d be back in the Aperion, just like Sigma and Tau and Gamma. So far only Gamma’s returned. No one knows if the others ever will.

  “This is no time for vacations,” Alpha—Elia—says. She told me her real name yesterday. Her attitude toward me changed after the invasion, so who knows, maybe I’ve proven myself. She’s Elia and Gamma is Jenya, and I already knew Tyler’s name. “Thrane and Dhemant are gone,” Elia continues, “but Einarr is still out there somewhere. We need to find her.”

  “She could be anywhere,” Tyler counters, his voice just on the edge of whiny. “She can wait. Just one night. We’ve earned a beer—or four.”

  “Seconded,” Jenya says.

  Elia opens her mouth but hesitates before she argues back. “One night,” she says. “We’re on her trail at oh eight hundred.”

  “Roger,” Tyler says and pops up out of his chair. “Drinks are on me. Who’s in?”

  “Right behind you,” Jenya says. “Jas, you coming?”

  I guess I’m part of
the group now. “I’m not even old enough to drink,” I remind her.

  “You’re an immortal super-being who just defeated an inter-dimensional conqueror,” Elia says. “You can have a beer if you want.”

  “Besides,” Gibzon adds, “this is nullspace. Laws regarding the consumption of alcohol don’t apply here.”

  I shake my head. I’m not in the mood to party. After everything that’s happened I just want to go home, even if it isn’t my home. “Next time,” I say.

  “You mean the next time you save the universe?” Tyler asks. “I hope that never, ever, happens again.”

  He has a point.

  “I just want to go somewhere familiar for a while,” I tell him. “This has all been a lot to handle—I need a little peace and quiet.” Who would have ever thought I’d think of New York City as a quiet place to get away from it all?

  “You’re coming back though?” Elia asks.

  They’re watching me, and it’s obvious they want me to stay—even Gibzon’s usual mask of inscrutability can’t hide it—but I’m not ready for that, not yet.

  I hold up my wrist and show them the thin silver loop wrapped around it. “I’ll be around,” I say. “Call me if you need me.”

  42

  Life Goes On

  I’m back in Buffalo, sitting under a tree on Normal Avenue, across from the side of Grover Cleveland High School, watching the lights in the gymnasium glow pink and purple through the high-arched windows. “Love My Way” by the Psychedelic Furs is playing inside.

  It’s June 25th, 1983—a little more than two weeks from the day I got my powers and lost my world. Here, if I still existed, I’d be five days from turning eighteen. I’ve walked through time and space, watched friends and loved ones die, but it’s seeing Martin Locke go into the graduation dance with Amanda Pfeiffer that finally brings the tears.

  I bawl for like ten minutes, sit outside my graduation dance and cry my eyes out like the biggest loser in the world. I know it’s not about Martin—he and I were never going to be a thing—but it’s a reminder: of everything that’s gone forever, and everything that can never be.

  Mom. Dad. Gabe. They’re all here, but they’re not. How am I supposed to live here without them in my life? I don’t know if I can stay, but where else am I going to go? I know Gibzon would gladly have me in Eternity Station, I even have a room there, but that place could never feel like home.

  This is home, in every way but the ones that matter.

  I wipe my eyes and pull myself back together. Superheroes aren’t supposed to cry. I’ve done enough moping. Time for a decision.

  I’m about to blink back to New York and find a place to sleep when the air next to me shimmers with the electric crackle of a boundless jumping in. I leap to my feet and flinch my wards up, but when I see who it is I instantly know I don’t need them and they fizzle back out again.

  It’s me. The other Jasmin.

  Her hair is short and metallic purple, and somehow she’s a little taller than me, and her face more chiseled, but other than that it’s like looking in a mirror.

  I’m not even shocked. I know I should be, I’m staring at another version of myself—the person I’ve been hearing about all this time—but after everything that’s happened another dose of impossible seems natural. Besides, I’ve felt funny for the past few days, ever since we closed the rift back to Thrane’s universe—an unsettled nagging in my head. I didn’t know what it was up until this exact moment, but now that she’s here I understand. It was her I was sensing. Somehow we’re connected.

  “Hey kiddo,” she says. “Figured you’d be here.”

  Suddenly I want nothing more than to punch her. I’ve been wading through her trail of crap for weeks and she has the nerve to show up here and call me kiddo?

  “Where the hell have you been?” I say, and something in my face causes her to widen her eyes and laugh.

  “Whoa there, tiger,” she says. “Ease back. I’m friendly.”

  I take two steps away, not sure if I even want to talk to her, but can’t help myself. “Everyone blamed me for your disappearing act,” I tell her. “I got grief from up and down the chronoverse for the crap you pulled.”

  “I bet Gibzon was pissed,” she says, an edge to her voice. Hearing her mention Gibzon so casually makes me remember she’s been around way longer than I have. We’re not identical, but she’s been through as much as I have.

  “No, not him especially,” I say. “But Chen was. And Elia and Jenya and I think Tyler—even though he tried to hide it. They thought you abandoned them.”

  “Chen was worried?” she says, and my heart clenches at the way she chews on her lip. Arg. I can’t believe I’m jealous of myself. I’m not even interested in Chen.

  “More annoyed than worried,” I say, trying to downplay it.

  “Sorry about that,” she says. “It took a while to make my way back, but I never for a second thought I needed to worry about another me showing up. It’s incredible that you’re even standing here.”

  “Tell me about it,” I say. “I still don’t believe any of this has happened. I keep expecting to wake up for breakfast.”

  “Eggs and rice,” other Jasmin says, her vision glazing over. “It’s been a long time.”

  “I miss them,” I say, my voice low.

  “I do too,” she says, and I know she does. We might be different, but not that different. “Every day.”

  We’re quiet for a moment, listening to the song, and then she says, “You know Martin Locke married Amanda. They had four kids and sixteen grandkids and are buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery.”

  “Two more people who ended up better off without us.”

  She considers this a moment. “I heard what you did,” she says. “None of this would be here without you. You beat Thrane. I tried and I failed. I ended up sucked through that portal into his universe and only just found a way out before it closed for good.”

  Her words jangle around in my head as unconnected noise and then I realize what she’s just said and my heart skips a little.

  “You were there? In Thrane’s universe. How?”

  She shrugs. “We had it out when I went to Midtown to confront him, and Thrane tossed me into the vortex. He knew if he killed me I’d just come back, but over there, I was out of his way. Returning wasn’t easy, but now that the energy siphons aren’t feeding his universe anymore, I don’t think he’ll be able to get back here again.”

  “I already know he isn’t coming back,’” I say. “I killed him.”

  She gives me a half smirk. “I wouldn’t count on it. He can’t be killed any easier than you or I. With the portal open to his world he likely returned to his version of the Aperion. He won’t be dead, but gathering enough energy to reopen a portal to back here will be impossible. He’s trapped there. He won’t bother us again.”

  Then a thought hits. “Wait—you went through and survived, that means Grackle could still be alive, trapped there too?”

  Other Jasmin’s face grows pale. “Grackle was pulled through the singularity?”

  “With Dhemant,” I say. “Right before it collapsed. He saved me.”

  She swears under her breath. “Damn it, I must have just missed him. Now I have to go save his ass.”

  “Wait—” I start, but trip over my tongue. I didn’t even consider that’d be possible. “You’re going back?”

  “Looks like it,” she says with a sigh.

  “I want to help,” I say, stepping up to her.

  “Oh, no doubt. You’ll help. But I have no idea how we’re going to get there. Jumping across universes isn’t as easy as walking between worlds. It was near impossible to get back here, it’s going to take some doing to go there again.”

  “We can ask Gibzon. Maybe he can help.”

  She narrows her eyes at me. “Do me a favor, don’t say anything to Gibzon. Let me work it out.”

  Suddenly, from out of nowhere, I get the sense she’s playing me. She’s a strange
r, with a mind of her own, not just an extension of me. I’ve been saying this all along, but I still need to remind myself: I’m. Not. Her.

  She’s hiding something, I can tell, and it’s a weird feeling, not trusting yourself.

  “Why not?” I ask. “He’s our best shot.”

  She gives me a hard look. “You met him. You’re telling me you didn’t get a weird vibe from him? He’s not telling us the whole truth about himself.”

  Yeah, he was odd at first, but maybe he’s just who he is. As far as I can tell he’s trying to protect us all. “What makes you say that?”

  “Just a feeling. But you need to trust me. Okay?”

  I don’t know. Gibzon seems okay to me, but she has known him longer. “Fine, I’ll keep it between us, for now, but I’m not waiting forever. I won’t leave Grackle trapped over there because you have a weird feeling.”

  “He’ll be fine. If there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s surviving.”

  “So what can I do?”

  “For now?” she says. “Nothing. You’ve been through enough. Hang out here, get this place solidified so it doesn’t disappear every time you jump. Make it real, it’s what you want, right? I’ll come get you when I figure something out.”

  Knowing Grackle isn’t gone forever relaxes a tightness in my chest I didn’t know was there, and an uplifting optimism rushes in.

  Make this place real … I can do that. I’ll make this timeline be the best it can. This may not be my world, but I can make it mine.

  “Okay,” I say. “So I guess we both have jobs to do.”

  “It seems so,” she says, and smiles. “I’ll be around if you need me.” She winks at me and the air fills with the smell of an overheated electric motor as she disappears.

  I guess this is home now. But If I’m going to stay here, I’m going to need a friend.