Allister had accepted Zosma and her fateful expiration, sprinted to the hall, and, operating on a hunch, began his vertical climb to the place where Dylurshin strung him up like slaughtered meat.
Difficult to navigate tunnels and platforms put him back in familiar locations again and again. He came through a tunnel’s mouth, heels first, stopped, and turned around to the manufacturing facility below. A transparent elevator shaft. A narrow bridge to another identical platform and tunnel entrance. “I thought the lab was here,” he said.
His mind sifted for previous images of the base, comparing those encounters to find similarities or differences in what lay before him. The Steps. Steps leading up. He hadn’t seen those before.
Agents exited the other tunnel, blocking access to the steps. Dammit, he thought, then followed up with, Shit, as he scrambled back. They opened fire at the sight of him. His right foot planted. He flipped sideways and spun backwards so the scorching plasma hit the walls instead of him. Landing on both feet, he ducked the projectile chunks of ice and steel blasting outward.
The base moaned like an old house. Firepower ceased. Hush settled. The agents’ heads traveled up and left, down and right, hunting for the origin of the noise. The ground’s sudden quaking triggered their disoriented shouting. Using the opportunity to reroute, he dashed onto the bridge. He’d planned to make it across, charging through the enemy mob like a rhino. His shoulder angled low and teeth pressed together, mistakes he quickly realized. He didn’t grasp why the ground shook with such resolve. Why it had decided right then to bring this behemoth known as C20 to its deserved demise.
Allister couldn’t stop and he couldn’t go back. Not while fissures shot up the shining walls on either side. Not while fully formed rifts divided those walls into fragments. Or while the platform dislodged, taking the bridge with it. All he could do was gasp, force himself to fall, and slide, heart racing, onto his stomach.
Whoom, it fell. Klunk, it smashed into the bridge lying beneath. Pause. Creak. Said bridge objected to the burden. Ear to the ground, his grip tightened. Whoom. Klunk. Pause. Creak. Whoom. Klunk. Boom. The base shuddered and the platform’s final impact puffed arctic dust up over him, clouding his surroundings. He pried his aching fingers from a handprint embedded by fear, inhaling, to assess his medical condition. The crash rang in his ears and slamming into metal had battered his ribs. He defied his lingering grogginess, exhaled, and rose onto his raw, splintered hands and cold, bruised knees. Not bad, considering. Am I back where I started?
Wreckage continued to fall around him, and he looked up to see the bridge had plummeted three stories, taking out the underlying cross bridges and their platforms as well. The glass elevator car had cranked past him during the ordeal.
Florence? he projected, swearing he saw her and her sword.
No answer. And no roars, no sizzling Z-energy, no combat. No Zosma. The last 5 percent must’ve siphoned off.
There were a cluster of damaged robotic assistants he hadn’t noticed before, donating their weight to the giant steel seesaw they shared. One hand and one knee at a time, he crawled toward solid ground. At a slight angle, the dutiful bridge pretended to wait for him, sitting still while he inched. But as unsecured machinery skated across iced over metal, it squeaked and tipped into diagonal decline. Gravity. Gravity became his nemesis, pulling the weighted objects closer. Rolling downward, he cursed and tucked his knees. The shallow slant now near vertical, an airborne Allister, machines, the bridge, and his chances for success plunged.
C20’s robotic assistants exploded on contact with solid ground. The bridge crunched in on itself against the same merciless foundation. And he, having strayed from their trajectory, plowed through a frozen ceiling.
Though he added injured back to the ailments list, his pained squint acquiesced to lit up eyes. An incomplete mural looked down at him.
If complete, eight planets would’ve been spaced in even measurement around the circle like numerals on a clock. Painted at the position of twelve midnight was one third of a large golden planet with an italic “AE” in its center. He identified it as the planet Aeneca, home to the Aenecans. To the left, was a smaller violet planet with an italic “U” in its center, which represented Uragon. Beneath that, was a crimson planet with an italic “P” in its center. He knew it as Psion, a planet comprised of psionic beings. A golden ring looped from the perimeter of the largest circle, around and through the other smaller circles and, like a waxing quarter moon, the missing side eased into darkness.
Allister assumed the mural’s remaining visuals rested on the broken pieces beside and under him, but he got the gist.
The eight governing planets of Andromeda’s Sanctuary... painted on a ceiling, like a fresco in the late fifteenth century. The temple, the place of worship, didn’t belong to the entity. Dylurshin wouldn’t keep architecture that glorified those civilizations; it despised them and all they stood for.
Some sort of explosive aftershock echoed from the base’s belly. He rolled onto his stomach and covered his head. More mural caved. Titanium alloy pieces crashed around him, one of which clanked against the large contraption he’d fallen next to.
Quiet followed.
The dusty, dormant control panel was intact post impact. Intrigued by the computer’s resilience, his instincts coaxed him into hasty exploration. First, he saw an “AE” and the sideways “8” insignia.
“Oh my fucking god,” he said, backing up for a wider POV on what he deduced was an alien ship’s cockpit. An observation deck. A captain’s chair. Weapon controls. Communication modules. The cargo ship that Dylurshin had arrived in three thousand years ago, Allister was inside it. It was inside the base.
He returned to the responsive screen, its lit-up surface occupied by Uragon’s symbol-based language. Black circle. Two heptagons inside it, on the left and right, had a green to white gradient. The symbol meant “time.” Black circle. White circle inside it. No gradient. “Binds.” Black circle. No other shape. No gradient. “All.” The sentence led his examination to corners and to crannies and to empty supply compartments in search of the hidden chamber designed to hold Dylurshin. Squatting and thumbing his ear, he hypothesized where it would be if not in the inconspicuous places. The Transporter gems glinted, teasing him. He pounded his fist in his hand.
“Welcome,” Dylurshin said.
Again, it embodied the darkness, blending in shadows, poised for an ambush. It had amassed substance, looming twenty feet tall. He knew if Dylurshin had emerged to confront him then the heaviness keeping him scrunched down, the sick traveling up his esophagus, and the stirring in the pit of his stomach were valid. Zosma was gone.
“There is nothing left. Her purpose is finalized. Surrender to me, Allister Adams.”
Allister swallowed the news. Growling, he flew through the air with accelerated motion, grabbed Dylurshin by the horns, and dragged it across the ground. A dark energy barricade blocked his battering fists, while a duplicate, but smaller creature split off from Dylurshin’s silhouette.
“I have sacrificed too much,” it bellowed, gesturing for the clone to attack. The left hook clobbered Allister’s cheek. “Fought too hard.” Dylurshin’s dark energy blasted him in the shoulder. “And planned too well to lose.” The clone kicked his leg in and slashed him across the chest.
The cold air couldn’t help but add its own sting to the cuts, reminding him it was, in fact, freezing. Up to that second, his body had done a fine job pretending their battle took place in regulate d temperatures. And, he’d spent the previous five minutes convinced his trembling had everything to do with anger and nothing to do with human frailty. Delirium tapped him on the back. He scoffed at it, jaw parallel to his knees, hands resting on his thighs.
His lip’s trickling blood ran its course. A dizzy spell spun the room like a top, and he went to whisper, “Get it together,” and spit onto the metal instead. The words couldn’t find his brain, or his brain couldn’t find the words.
D
ylurshin snarled, as did its clone, a primal, foreign thing. Pulsing ruby energy ran through rifts in their mist contortions like rivers through canyons. Both circled him, neither in a rush to end his life or their time together inside the intergalactic vessel.
Who’s turn was it to attack? Whoever wore the goading grimace. Allister stood opposite the alien in defense, put his left hand up, maintained dodgy aim by steadying with the right, and waited for Z-energy’s charge to reach his elbow. Zoom. Zoom. Two circular blue beams penetrated Dylurshin and its clone’s exteriors. Distorted in suffering, the mist shapes made all the noise they could, until their exoskeletons hardened and the residual energy short-circuited, and evaporated. They were not stopped. They were not slowed down. Panting, Allister faltered as Dylurshin’s retaliatory overhand swing slammed into his curved spine and pinned him on the floor.
“The Z-energy is more power than humanity could ever dream. More than I had ever dreamed.”
“This isn’t a future for us, it’s a future for you,” Allister fought to say, “Humanity doesn’t need you, Dylurshin, we can advance on our own.”
“In the grandest of theories, you could.” Dylurshin’s dense limb pressed hard to crush his will and his way. It cackled and said, “However, your preservation is not guaranteed without a strong arm to guide you.”
Hot gaseous breath burned his nostrils. Allister huffed and puffed, grunting and pushing to relieve the enormous weight. The mist thickened and slinked up his legs and around his chest. Poof. Gone. The Transporter gems had reacted on their own and in luminous disintegration, he fizzled away. The black cloud of mist folded in like a collapsing star and regenerated clump by clump.
“Two and a half million light years away, there is an emperor, disguised as a king, who’s kept an entire galaxy in blind submission,” Dylurshin said. Its tentacles swirled, sniffing the cockpit for him. “He could not kill me, so he sent me here because I know his secrets. I am destined to bring him to justice.”
Allister’s mental encyclopedia listed no knowledge on the Zaian race Dylurshin belonged to, as his knowledge came from Uragon. His brain studied the floating blob down to its complicated depths.
The last Zaian, an exiled creature that had sewed itself into human societies. Acted as innocent as an extra thread. Banished for crimes it was driven to commit. No, Dylurshin was not evil in the maniacal sense, if you were the type to understand how a creature’s past can dictate their decisions and motivations.
“You do not have the wherewithal to activate the capsule, Allister. Summoning that much temporal energy will annihilate your feeble hybrid body,” Dylurshin hovered, hissing, “Transonians are immortal. You are not.”
Mallen. The alien buried somewhere in Antarctica had innate transportation abilities. He was a Transonian, “a keeper of time and space.” The planet Transom’s collective temporal energy had given life to the Transporter gems. Allister wondered if the trouble he had with the gems was that, as a Uragonian descendent, he didn’t share their power.
Thinking back, enchanting the Chains of Infinity had taken more strength than transporting six beings to different continents in a world Mallen didn’t know. Allister could barely transport himself without going unconscious. He’d never used the Transporter gems as an offensive weapon. Open a portal here and there, move around the world (sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident), and see the past. If his time was to be spent mastering their use, he was way behind schedule.
In that humbling moment, accepting his limitations and the need to keep learning, his mind unlocked. The gems could teach him. What was a twenty-year-old earthling’s gifted knowledge versus four-thousand-year-old artifacts’ experience?
Dylurshin did not advance. Dylurshin did not retreat. It paced in obsessive compulsion back and forth along the ship’s observation deck. An intriguing position... or not. That which we fear most, we do not keep far from sight. Chest aching at the resonance of Zosma’s wisdom, Allister exhaled and said, “It’s in the center.”
The mist’s rotting odor drifted to his hideaway. The fumes meant Dylurshin was too close. Too close for further contemplation. Too close for further hesitation. Too close for—
It materialized in his peripheral, swollen with malicious intent. A single condensed breath threatened to compromise his advantage. And in the throes of danger, one of his mother’s most profound sentences replayed. “Neight taught me our futures are tangled up in plans we may not want to be part of, but they’re part of us,” she’d said in the cave beneath C20. “Every decision you make matters.”
Cowardice had no advantages. Fear had no benefits. The temporal energy surged in his veins and he looked at the flashing Transporter gems.
“The Great Betrayer,” Allister said, limping out of hiding, “you’re in pain. You’re alone.”
“You dare question my being!” Dylurshin’s axe-shaped appendage chopped at him.
His left arm shot up to take the brunt of the swing. Crackling on impact, Z-energy erupted and thwarted the blade’s penetration.
It lifted the axe and chopped down harder, drilling him into the ground.
“I saw the Temporal Chamber when our minds were linked!” he yelled.
Enveloped in bright white light, his chin raised. As Dylurshin had foretold, he expended more effort than he thought possible. Temporal energy flowed in streaks and weaved through the observation deck. The Transonian gift rebuilt the ancient capsule of star’s crust ten billion times stronger than steel. Tranquil air became a blustering distraction, throwing debris about.
Dylurshin growled, “I will not be undone by mortals,” and thrust its sharpened limb forward.
Razored edges would’ve glinted along the thick spears’ blade, if it weren’t spawned by a cosmic demon’s imagination and non-reflective dark mist. The ruthless weapon greeted Allister’s epidermal layer with a harsh point. With its agonized squish and his agonized scream, the tip pierced his spine through his abdomen, and protruded from his back. Twisting, sinking deeper, shredding his organs.
His skin drained to a pasty brown. Amidst guttural choking, his mind went blank. The room quiet. Allister stood in the sparkling pool of space. Privileged to a birds’ eye view: Antarctica, then Earth, then the solar system, then—at least two hundred and fifty million stars woven on the divine cosmic ether, painted on the canvas known as the Milky Way galaxy. In those brief seconds, so entrenched in time, he understood its nature. Circular. Spherical. Infinite. The beginning was the end was the beginning was the end. He learned not to look forward into the future or backward into the past. Look around, pinpoint a location, and go there.
Allister landed back inside himself. His hands dug into the misty weapon tearing him open and resisted.
The chamber’s door opened, re-enchanted by a time energy tempest. Soaked in the entity’s doom, the Chains of Infinity moved with sinuous grace, rattling over metal floor, and coiled around the swelling cloud known as Dylurshin Hexforth.
“I destroyed that abomination,” the cosmic being screeched—expanded and contracted, flexing against their constriction.
Mist it had sent to influence humanity, returned from failure. Twenty feet became ten. Ten feet became five. Weapons became claws, then fingers. Three horns flattened to a smooth round head. The chains absorbed the mist into their shining links and cranked in reverse, dragging the alien away. Dylurshin crashed to the ground, a calcified exoskeleton. “No. No. No!” it gurgled in protest, striking the cockpit, though its strength was naught.
“Everyone is bound by... time, Dylurshin,” Allister said, huddled on his knees, blood running from the wound. “... Even you.”
“You do not understand,” Dylurshin protested, scratching at the metal for assistance. “Vor Vegacent is the tyrant, not me. The Aenecans will return here and destroy you.” The door shut, activating the temporal power that had filled the chamber thousands of years ago. Dylurshin returned to dormancy. Infinite patience and planning, undone by arrogance. The ancient prison vani
shed in a burst of light.
Zosma Caster
The Subconscious
A blue blaze burned across the subconscious world, destroying happiness and contentment as it crept to her protective fortress.
“How much longer will I live?” Zosma asked.
Believing it her dying day, she paid homage to her physical body, every curve and nuance carved in pure energy. When the energy engulfed her and the tower, it would be over. “Humanity would be saved.”
“You’ve been misinformed about the way our relationship works,” Leesa said, perched on the ledge. “I blame fear. Your fear of what you are.”
A haven overrun, usurped by greed. The land portrayed a similar sight to Uragon’s final hours, a sight she’d seen minutes before blasting into space on her way to Earth. Minutes before entering a quarter century slumber.
“What am I? What are you?”
“I have existed since Uragon’s conception,” she began, rising. Her body basked in the approaching flames, she turned to Zosma and said, “Living in the hearts and souls of its people for a hundred thousand years. I wasn’t aware then I was pure magic energy.”
Starlight touched Leesa’s skin, to bring it color, to bring it life, but it declined their charity. “Some five thousand years ago, an intergalactic being breached Andromeda. It sought to shroud our galaxy in its darkness, and there came a need for the collective power of Uragon.”
The Z-energy became infinite. It would never burn out, exhaust... diminish. The Z-bands had been welded in the same imperishable star’s core as her armor and imbued with the supreme energy. Artifacts formed to join seven others in a war that took a galaxy to the brink of death and damnation.
“Z-energy possession is a natural occurrence in the Uragonian gene sequence, but you, you, have been gifted with so much more.” Leesa held Zosma’s degenerating hands. “Together, we are the source.”
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