Fear Tomorrow (The Fear Chronicles Book 4)

by C. C. Bolick

  My mind felt foggy. “Who are you?”

  “You know me. Take my hand.”

  No, I wasn’t going anywhere. Moving felt impossible, as if someone sat on my chest and refused to let me leave. Or maybe it was all in my head. I’d just stay where it was safe. Safe.

  “Go away,” I shouted into the void.

  “You know who I am. Regina!”

  “I’m tired.”

  “The darkness is stealing what’s left of your mind. Don’t give up. Reach for me.”

  I tried to take a breath and the air felt weightless in my lungs. My head became foggier. Talking was too difficult. Even thinking was taking the last of my energy. “I can’t. I need… sleep.”

  “You’ve been sleeping for days. If you go back to sleep, you might never wake up.”

  “Then we’re done.” I closed my eyes. Better to see the darkness in my head than the wall of darkness surrounding me.

  “No, my fearless girl. We’re nowhere near done.” The warmth in her voice reached through the darkness. So sure and so calm. If only I had her strength. “I’m not leaving without you.”

  Leaving… Where would she go? Where would either of us go in the darkness? No, I’d go back to sleep. Perhaps I’d sleep forever in this place.

  “Regina,” she said next to my ear.

  I opened my eyes and reached out but felt nothing. No hand, no arm, nothing but useless air. Since I was no longer breathing, I wasn’t so sure it was air.

  “This part was hard for me too. I floated in the darkness for what seemed like months before remembering you’re my daughter. I need you to remember me, Regina. Think of that last day we were together.”

  Last day… “Mama,” I said and this time my voice boomed in my ears.

  “Regina.”

  “This must be a dream.” If possible, my voice came out louder. “I’m not breathing.” I put a hand to my neck. “My heart isn’t beating. This can’t be happening for real.”

  “Hold out your hand.”

  I stood and extended my hand until I felt pressure softer than the sound of her voice. As I thought of my last memory, I couldn’t picture anything but the yellow dress she wore the day she died. Our car had been totaled by a drunk driver, but I wouldn’t let those awful thoughts intrude on the happiness I felt while gripping her hand. Her arms went around me and I fumbled in the darkness to return her hug.

  How long had I really been in this darkness? Days? Weeks? “Mama?”

  “Yes, Regina.”

  I froze as I considered the tone of her voice. Distinct and clear, it was the voice of reason I remembered from my childhood. “You’re alive?”

  She sighed as if trying to explain why we couldn’t afford the new laptop I’d begged for the week before she died. That was three years ago, and I still felt guilt over our last argument. “I’m dead, Regina. So are you.”

  “No.”

  “Think back to what happened in the conference room. I know it’s hard. The only way to get through this is to remember the details. Picture the scene in your mind and accept the truth. I’ve been through this myself. Remembering was tough, but you’ve got me to help you.”

  “Remembering… I don’t understand.” I pulled away from her.

  “Do you remember when we talked about the darkness? It was your greatest fear and mine. That fear helped you save everyone we care about.”

  A memory of us standing on a cliff flashed in my mind. The fiery sunset faded as we looked on before taking off and flying around the world.

  Flying, like some kind of superheroes. It was a real power we shared. I thought of the vibrant colors as I controlled the neutrons and caused amazing explosions faster than normal eyes could follow. I used the neutrons to help me fly and stop Louis’s bombs. Frowning, I pushed thoughts of the man who’d insisted he was my father out of my mind. He was a terrorist intent on using my power to force governments of the world to advance his agenda.

  Instead, I thought only of our day on the cliff above the crashing ocean waves. “I remember us flying together.”

  “That was two days ago.”

  “It feels like years ago… I can’t be dead. I just turned eighteen.” Tears filled my eyes. “It’s not fair for me to die.”

  “There’s no such thing as fair when talking about death. Young people die. Babies die. Some people die for no reason. Some can’t seem to meet death no matter how carelessly they live.”

  “I did everything I could to help save lives. Why can’t the universe take that into account?”

  She chuckled. “Some call it Karma.”

  “Then Karma is working against me.”

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that sometimes we’ve got to make Karma work for us.” She slid a hand up my arm to my shoulder. “Do you remember your brother?”

  “Alfie?” I pictured my eight-year-old brother’s expression the last time we’d talked. It was the day I assured him Bethany was really Mama. Convincing him she’d come back from the dead and taken over the body of a coma patient had been easier than I’d thought.

  I realized I didn’t even take the time to see him before going to Sylvia’s meeting. Tears slipped down my cheeks. “I’ll never see Alfie again.”

  “Don’t say never. You saw me again after I died.”

  Alfie’s smiling face faded, replaced by an image of Travis. I put a hand over my mouth as the tears turned into sobs. “Travis is all alone.”

  Again, she wrapped her arms around me. “He’s not alone.”

  “He knows I died.” My whole body shook. “He saw me disappear. It’s not fair,” I wailed into her shoulder. “Did you know he asked me to marry him?”

  Mama patted my back. “I know. It’s important you remember more than just pieces. You’ve got to think through what happened. Start with when you arrived at the conference room.”

  “The room was filled with people. Sylvia, Dad, the senator. Travis was at my side. His dad was there—it had to be his dad since their voices sounded alike. They had the same hair, but Travis’s dad didn’t have the same green eyes.”

  “No,” Mama said. “Travis’s mother had green eyes.”

  “I’ve got to see Travis.”

  “Finish the story. You saw Travis’s dad and…”

  “The queen was there with people dressed in green uniforms. Lots of agents. Van appeared and held up his laser. He walked toward Travis’s dad and I thought he would fire.”

  “He did fire.”

  My throat tightened and it was a struggle to get the words out. I thought of the bright red beam as it surrounded me. I remembered the horrible burning as the laser vaporized my skin and then my bones. “Van killed me.”

  “Yes.”

  If my heart could beat, it would be pounding in my chest. “When did this happen? You said I’d been asleep for days.”

  “It feels like days, maybe weeks for us. For them only ten minutes have passed since you died.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “You know time moves differently for us. When we flew around the world, we took hours for a trip that only seemed like minutes to everyone else. Same as when you stopped the bombs from detonating. You slowed time to almost nonexistent as you moved the neutrons and then forced them to stop. Do you remember now?”

  Only ten minutes had passed? That couldn’t be possible. I felt as if I’d slept for days.

  “Do you want to go see Travis?”

  “Travis?” I asked as if she was miles away. He must be hurting. Thinking of him watching me die, the pain he must be feeling brought more tears.

  “He’s torn apart by what happened to you. Do you remember how you felt when I died?”

  “I felt anger at you being gone, anger at the man who killed you. If I could have hurt him, I would have.”

  “Those tears on your face aren’t real. You can’t feel pain here or any emotion. That guilt you think you feel is useless. It’s just a memory but one you need to process before you c
an move on.”

  “I don’t want to move on.” I wiped my face and the tears disappeared. “Travis will kill Van. I don’t want him to kill anyone because of me.”

  She surrounded me, not with her arms this time but with her power. I felt her love through the darkness. “I know, but you’ve got to stop him.”

  “How?”

  “After I died, I wandered the planet for weeks. I couldn’t remember you or your father. Finally, I started to remember who I was and what happened. You don’t have that kind of time.”

  “You said only ten minutes have passed.”

  “In twenty-four hours, Earth will be destroyed.”

  I thought about how that made me feel. Maybe Mama was right. Emotions weren’t real here. As I began to accept the idea, a light flashed to my right. A gold light followed by blue and then red. Colors began to appear around me, painting the walls of the room light blue and the floor white.

  The outline of Mama’s face appeared and changed from a dull blob of color to red lips and serious eyes the same shade as mine. Her blond hair fell over her shoulders and down her back as mine did. Again, she wore the yellow dress. Furniture appeared around us and pictures took shape on the wall. A couch sat behind Mama and the pictures held characters from video games. Pac-Man. Legend of Zelda. Super Mario Brothers.

  All of the classic games Travis loved.

  She looked around. “This is the first place you thought of?”

  “This is Travis’s room. I’ve got to find him and this is where I’ll start.”

  “You’re not at the base. All of this is in your head. You choose the colors and the decorations like a painter.”

  “Then I can take us anywhere?”

  Mama smiled and pulled me over to the couch. She sat and I dropped down next to her. “I’m so proud of you. It took me weeks to get this far.”

  “You did this alone.”

  “And you have me.” She gripped my hand. “Part of me knows we could stay here for years and talk. I could teach you so much about our power, but another part of me doesn’t want you to grow up.”

  I put my hand over hers. “If I’m dead, Travis is all alone. You said I’ve got to stop Travis.”

  “I think that boy really loved you.”

  “Loves,” I said. “This isn’t over.”

  “It’s over for you, Regina. Before you can go back, you’ve got to deal with the reality you’re dead.”

  “It’s only been ten minutes. How is that enough time to deal with being dead?”

  “We’ve got time on our side, remember? Days here are minutes back there. You need to go back to him, but not until you’re ready.”

  “You also said in twenty-four hours Earth would be destroyed.” I pictured myself in the conference room and scraped my memory until I remembered the last words I heard before Van fired the laser.

  “Killing is killing,” Travis said. “There’s always another way.”

  “Not this time,” Van said. “I’m sorry.”

  Van was sorry. In that moment, I thought he meant sorry for targeting Travis’s father, the person he seemed to hate the most. I considered Van’s words during our mission to the sun.

  “Do you believe one person can make a difference? If one person gave their life would it be worth the sacrifice to save other lives?”

  Van killed me to save lives. I was the person he talked about on our trip to the sun. It was a mission he struggled to complete.

  That whole time he’d planned to shoot me, which made no sense. Why fly me on a mission to the sun? Why go to Virginia and rescue me and Erin, insisting on bringing us back to the base safely? He’d insisted on protecting me on more than one occasion, even demanding Sylvia let him lead the mission to the sun and use his ship to ensure I stayed alive.

  How ironic that he killed me the next day. As I watched Mama and reasoned through my last day, a terrible thought began to take shape. Had she known what Van planned? Had she betrayed me?

  “Why didn’t you stop him?” I jumped to my feet. “You watched him kill me and did nothing.”

  “I couldn’t stop Van.”

  “If time goes so much slower for you, you could have shoved the laser away. You were able to stop the man who killed you from killing again. I watched the video. That’s how his steering wheel turned and he avoided those people on the sidewalk.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “Why are you breathing? It’s not like we have to.”

  “Having to breathe to survive and needing to feel alive are two different things. You’ll understand before this is over.”

  “You mean my death? How can that ever be over?”

  “I need you to accept the fact you’re dead.”

  Her grave tone rippled through me. There was no going back to the way things were twenty-four hours ago. Last night, when I’d slept in Travis’s arms… I was dead and he’d never hold me again. The realization brought a surge of dread.

  “No emotions,” I whispered. “It’s not real.” However, the sparkles continued to grow and flash with an intensity that reflected in Mama’s eyes and forced me to look away. “Aren’t you going to tell me to stop with the blue lights?”

  “No, Regina,” Mama said. “Your fear is the only thing that can save everyone we care about.”

  Chapter Two

  Rena

  “Me?” I asked. “How can my fear save the planet?”

  “The same way you’ve saved lives each time you defused one of Louis’s bombs. Calming the solar flares was only the beginning. You have no idea how strong you are now.”

  “Now that I’m dead?”

  Her voice filled with sadness. “I didn’t want this for you, Regina. Not yet. You feel anger—”

  “You have no idea what I’m feeling.”

  “I wanted us to be together but alive. I wanted to grow old with your father and that chance was stolen from me.”

  “By a drunk driver. This isn’t the same.”

  “I wanted to watch you get married and have babies. Seeing you like this is tearing me apart, but we’re out of time for regret. Twenty-four hours is all we’ve got to work with.”

  “We’ve got forever here,” I shouted.

  Her sadness disappeared. “You’ve got to let go of the anger. That emotion will drain your power and right now you need to focus on getting stronger.”

  “I’ll get stronger all right. Wait until I see Van again.” I held up my hands and thought about the neutrons. The blue had faded but there were a million unanswered questions. “How do I wake up from this?”

  “First you’ve got to think happy thoughts. Forgiveness is key to moving on.”

  “You’re crazy. I’m dead and you want me to be okay with this? I still think you could have stopped him.”

  “You can focus on Van later. Right now, you need to accept that life as you knew it is over. It’s time for you to transition to the next phase.”

  “Listen to yourself,” I said. “You’re talking forgiveness and the next phase. Damn it, I want my life back.”

  “You can’t have it, I’m sorry. Death is permanent.”

  “The agency surrounds itself with people who have powers. Can’t someone go back in time and change what happened to me?”

  “Some people like Travis can see the future, but I don’t know of anyone with the power to go back in time and change it. No one’s ever done that. I would imagine changing the past would have all sorts of consequences.”

  “I’m going to find a way out of this.”

  “When I died, my powers grew exponentially. You have no idea what’s waiting for you.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want this.”

  “My powers were stronger after I died, but I never felt the extent of my true strength until I accepted the fact I was dead and we’d never be together. Only then could I walk with no chains holding me back. To be myself alone was the most liberating experience I’ve ever felt.”

  Liberating. I thought of th
e feeling when I realized I didn’t have to breathe. No one ruled over me any longer. Not the agency, not any kind of government. For the first time in my life, I felt invincible and the feeling had nothing to do with my lack of fear. I knew nothing and no one could hurt me anymore.

  As I held onto that feeling, giving my brain time to relish this new knowledge, the blue began to glow along my palms. Not from fear as always before. This time I controlled the blue.

  “You don’t need fear to make your power work?” I asked.

  She smiled. “I don’t need fear to control my power, but you had to see that on your own.”

  The blue faded. “You accepted the fact we’d never be together and then you found a way to come back.”

  “As I’m sure you’ll find a way to reach Travis.”

  I took a deep breath, made myself breathe, and felt a rush of power flooding through me. It started with a tingling in my chest and then pulsed through my veins. I reached for my neck and could have sworn I felt a faint pulse. Maybe she was right about needing to feel alive.

  “You said Earth will be destroyed in twenty-four hours. How do you know?”

  “Golvern’s queen. After your body disintegrated, she told Travis you had to die so your powers can save her planet and ours.”

  Something about the word disintegrate and the easy way she used it made my stomach churn. “We have the same power. Why couldn’t you save the planet?”

  “I’m not strong enough, but together—”

  “How would anyone know you’re not strong enough?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “It’s hard for me to explain. Since I can’t do this alone, you and I will work together.”

  “Do what alone? Stop another bomb?” I stared at the door to the hall. If I imagined Travis walking through the door, would he?

  “Stop a star from exploding. You’re the reason Van came to Earth. You’ve been his mission all along.”

  “How do you know about his mission?” I spun to her. “You said you couldn’t stop Van, and I thought you meant you didn’t have the power. What you really meant was you wouldn’t stop him.”

  “That’s right.”

  My eyes widened. “You let him kill me?”

  “I didn’t interfere with what had to be done.”