by Caleb Karger
“Where’d she go?!”
“Dude, she just vanished!”
“Alright, come on,” Hot Stuff said. “Next.”
One by one, the team went through. I expected a flash of light or noise, but there was nothing. I didn’t know what to expect when it was my turn to go. I squeezed my eyes shut and stepped through the threshold.
The instant I passed through the arch, my body got blown apart. All that remained was a bunch of scattered atoms. I didn’t know if I was alive or dead because I still had thoughts and feelings, just no physical form.
I watched the atoms that had once made up my body vibrate as if they were getting charged. Then they shot upwards into the sky. For some reason, I got pulled alongside them. The higher I went, the more speed I gained. The ground rushed away from me, then the continent, and then the entire Earth shrank out of my sight.
All around me was the vastness of space. Darkness above me, beside me, and below me; pierced through by little balls of light. I must’ve been crossing an enormous distance, but with nothing passing close by it seemed like I wasn’t moving at all. Out of nowhere, Mars came and went.
A second later I approached the asteroid belt. I started to worry. At the speed I was going, I was sure I’d hit one, but I zipped around the frozen rocks with ease.
Gravity tugged me towards something large. Then I saw it, the planet Katherine had described. Nuzzling it were asteroids and huge mirrors filled with blinding light. The world was breathtaking with its glistening seas, endless forests, and towering mountains. The surface was free of the gray city stains that covered the Earth.
The darkness of space faded away as I entered the alien planet’s atmosphere. A thick wall of rapidly churning clouds blocked my view of the surface. I flew into the storm and lightning flashed around me. Thunder rocked the air.
Finally, I broke through the clouds and plummeted towards a big blue blur. I wasn’t slowing down, whatever I was racing towards, I was going to hit hard. The atoms I’d been following reassembled beneath me. My conscious was sucked back into my body. Then everything went black…
Cold rain poured onto my face. I heard the roar of an ocean beneath me. I wobbled as I realized I was standing on something solid and a pair of gentle hands were guiding me forward. I opened my eyes and looked around.
The team was on a floating platform. An exact copy of the arch on Earth stood in the center. Hovering all around us were thousands of other platforms holding similar portals. Ninja were coming and going.
Far below us, an angry ocean battered against jagged cliffs. The continent looked like how I imagined the U.S would if California fell into the ocean. Past the cliffs, grassy hills and muddy patches covered the land. A wall of mountains more formidable than the Himalayas marked the distant horizon.
Between the cliffs and the mountains was a city surrounded by a scarlet wall. If New York, Hong Kong, and Tokyo combined, they would still only be a fraction of this city’s size. I figured this must’ve been the base.
I held the side of my head. I was dizzy and confused. My body felt uncomfortable. It had been so freeing to be outside of it, uncaged, able to fly, and soar at incredible speeds. Now I felt slow and cumbersome.
“We got everyone?!” Katherine said. “Okay, let’s move!”
She grabbed a flailing rope bridge that connected the platform to the land below. When she stepped onto it, her weight calmed its crazy movement, but just one good gust of wind would send her flying off. A hard bubble formed in my throat. I was going to have to cross that death trap.
“Just move fast,” Hot Stuff said.
I gripped the ropes on either side and balanced on the center rope. I went across as quickly as I could. The rain made the rope slick, and the wind made me waver. The rest of the team was hot on my heels.
Once on solid ground, Katherine led us across the hills towards the city. We walked for a long time; the base appeared closer than it was due to its size. I couldn’t even begin to fathom how many people lived within the wall.
After an hour of trekking, the gap between us and the city was finally closing. The only thing I could see now was the imposing red wall. It dwarfed everything around it, and its height seemed immeasurable, who knew how thick it was. I had to squint to see the tiny black flags waving at the top. If there were any people up there, they were too small to see. I couldn’t find a gate or door. In fact, there was no opening of any kind. How were we supposed to get in?
About a mile away from the wall, mud replaced the grass. Katherine came to a halt. Everyone looked around, wondering what we were supposed to do now. We shook as the ground beneath us started descending.
We were lowered into a dark elevator shaft. The only light came from above and the further down we went the less I could see. The rickety elevator seemed like it was going to break any second now. Its groans and creaks echoed all through the endless shaft.
“Hold your breath!”
“What?”
A plume of white gas came towards us. I coughed on whatever it was. My fingers and toes tingled before going numb. I started to see three of everything, and it felt like someone had stuffed cotton balls into my ears.
The elevator screeched to a stop. Between the darkness and my blurring vision, I had no idea what was going on. I heard the sound of a hundred boots headed straight for us and the ringing of swords getting unsheathed. I tried to take a defensive stance but almost fell over. I hoped we weren’t under attack.
“Identify!” a man said.
“Commander Katherine Carvosso.”
The tension in the air diffused. “Ah, first time bringing the kids?”
“Yep.”
My vision went in and out as my body fought to return to normal. I could barely make out the man in front of Katherine. His uniform was completely black, no white undershirt or white wrapped shins. He had a thin device in his hand; it looked like a glowing piece of glass.
“Alright, first timers, if you weren’t smart enough to hold your breath, you’ve been hit with a bit of numbing gas. It will wear off in a minute. I’m just going to tag you so the next time you come through, our sensors will be able to identify you,” the man said.
He came by each of us. When he got to me, he lifted my arm and pulled on my sleeve. I heard a high-pitched whine from his device then he moved on. I looked at my sleeve, fused to the fabric was a quarter sized silver pin with the squad number on it.
After everyone had been marked, we were allowed to pass through. We went down a long corridor with metal plated walls. The whole thing wreaked of wet dog. When we reached the end, we had to pass through two thick metal doors.
We stepped out into an underground city. All of the buildings looked the same; cubed shaped with hexagonal windows, and covered in grime and green fungus. Millions of rusty, leaking pipes ran across the ceiling. As for the ground, it was uneven and flooded with black water. Christmas lights and Asian lamps were strung all over the place to provide light alongside countless neon signs.
If the city wasn’t already strange enough, its inhabitants brought the place to a whole new level of weird. Now and then I’d spot a human, but for the most part, the crowds were made up of creatures. They came in every size, color, and mythological tale. Some were dressed in modern clothes while others looked like they just walked out of a time machine.
“What is this place?” I whispered to Hot Stuff.
“The people and the creatures that live on Nibiru aren’t allowed to go to Earth. They come here to buy the goods we bring in,” she said. “You can find just about anything down here.”
Katherine led us through a marketplace. Filling the streets were carts selling anything from sandals to Ahool bones. Storefronts surrounded us from all sides. One store had love seats displayed in the window. Inside, I could see a Yeti testing a reclining chair. Further down, a pet store was selling exotic animals like Jackalopes and unicorns.
“The best genie lamps sold here!” someone called. A lady tall
enough to play professional basketball squeezed by me. She had blue skin and glittering gold clothes covered in jewels.
“How many bathrooms come with this model?” she asked.
I thought I walked onto a movie set. I waited to see camera equipment or people getting make-up applied on a dark side street. I gaped as a girl with eagle’s wings carrying tennis shoes walked by, and a Wendigo drinking a smoothie.
Once we passed the marketplace, we reached the edge of the underground city. We approached another set of big metal doors guarded by burly ninja. They checked our tags before opening the doors. Beyond them was a stairwell leading up to the surface. Although, at this point, it resembled a waterfall more than a staircase because of the rain.
When we reached the top, we were now on the inside of the colossal red wall and the base sprawled out before us. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Harukan,” Katherine said.
The city’s buildings were close together, making narrow and crooked streets. From what I could tell, when the ninja wanted to build something new, they didn’t demolish the old building; they simply built on top of it. Each skyscraper looked like one huge, dangerous hodge-podge. One building had a traditional Japanese structure on the bottom, with a medieval castle above it, and was topped by a modern apartment complex. Most of the buildings looked unstable, which caused them to droop forward and block out some of the light. Higher up the buildings were connected by walkways and courtyards. The entire city looked like an engineer’s nightmare, and the whole thing seemed ready to collapse.
Despite its size, ninja overcrowded the city. I couldn’t spot a single unmasked face. Some uniforms matched ours, others were blue, and some were gray. Those that weren’t in a uniform had traditional Japanese clothes, robes, and wooden slippers. There were ninja on bicycles, scooters, and in small futuristic versions of Fiats fighting their way through the confining streets.
As we made our way through, I noticed the streets were just as confused as the buildings. There was cobble stone one moment, cement the next, followed by dirt. Every street was packed. It didn’t help that there was clutter against the buildings like crates and dumpsters. Laundry hung overhead, as well as banners and more Asian lanterns. I could see people sitting on balconies with umbrellas talking to their neighbors.
The aroma of fried rice and stir fry hit my nose. We went past a handful of the weirdest restaurants I’d ever seen. The tables inside were hidden in cubicles with two-way mirror doors. When a server brought someone their food, they slid it right through the glass as if it wasn’t there. The TV’s displayed sporting events, but the participants were all ninja. On one TV, they were surfing the chaotic waves formed by a hurricane while avoiding a Kraken-like monster. On another was a crazy soccer game with ninja running at super speed, flipping over each other, and using martial art moves to steal the ball.
Our team boarded a shuttle, and it drove onto an elevated highway. I could see the city’s skyline better from there. Harukan was an odd place that seemed to exist in all time periods, yet at the same time, none of them.
The shuttle dropped us off in front of a wooden fence. Posters were plastered all over it. When I got closer to them, I saw that they were “Wanted” signs. Most of them had the same face—a gorgeous woman with deceptive amber eyes, and black hair pulled into the tightest bun that ever existed. She watched us with an icy, calculated hatred. Printed in dozens of languages were bold, red letters all saying one thing; ENEMY NUMBER ONE: GENEVIEVE FLORENCE.
“Hey, isn’t that the lady that wrote the handbook?” I asked.
Lily turned to the wall. Her brow furrowed. “Yeah, I think it is. But why is she the most wanted—”
“Don’t fall behind you two,” Hot Stuff said.
We followed the fence around to a gate. There was a sign over it, but I couldn’t read the language. We entered a large training yard divided up by walking paths. There were sand pits, grass fields, and obstacle courses. The constant clap of training staffs striking together filled the air. Most of the people training were kids, probably between the ages of thirteen and nineteen.
Surrounding the yard were old Japanese style buildings. They were all connected by bridges and stacked on top of each other like a tower of pancakes. Some of the screen doors were cracked. I could see beds in one building and what looked like a torture chamber in another.
We took a tunnel that brought us to the other side of the compound. Now we faced a maze of elevated walkways, stairs, more tunnels, and courtyards. It reminded me of the cities in my dreams that had no sense to them.
Somehow, Katherine was able to find our destination. We entered an atrium made entirely of glass. I couldn’t see any support columns or beams that held the building up, nor the lines that separated the glass panels. It was like we were under one, big glass dome. Rain struck the top before sliding down the walls, making the outside world a total blur.
The atrium was overflowing with people. Most of them seemed our age. Some were talking and telling jokes; others were standing indifferently as they watched the room. A couple of commanders stood out of the sea of black with their colorful shirts. There were easily a thousand individuals in the crowd.
Our entrance didn’t go unnoticed. Everyone standing by the door turned to stare at us. A few people said hello to Katherine. Some waved to us, but mostly they whispered to each other as we passed. Tidbits of conversations drifted to my ears.
“It’s good to see you again, Violet.”
“Your arm is growing back nicely.”
“I just want the rain to stop.”
Suddenly, one discussion caught my attention.
“Dozens of camps have been burned to the ground. Almost every camp from California to Utah. Colorado is the latest state to be hit,” a man said. I paused mid-step and concentrated so I could listen more carefully.
“But they’ve never targeted so many children before,” a woman said.
“Yes, well, whoever it is they want this time, they’re not going to give up until they have them. I’ve never seen them like this. Every camp was trashed. They’d gone through everything and left no survivors.”
The woman made a disgusted sound. “To kill all of those children…that’s a new low, even for them.”
“We’re keeping squads posted to as many camps as possible, but we don’t have the resources to guard everywhere all the time.”
“We’re always spread thin.”
The man sighed. “Of course, we might have the numbers if people didn’t keep leaving. There’s a new Betrayal every other day now.”
“Mmmhmm, I heard that they’ve infested the Preservation Division, but good luck trying to sort out who’s with us and who’s not.”
“These are uncertain times my friend, very uncertain.”
“Well, you know what the cause of it is. Ever since she left, we’ve been a mess.”
The man spoke very quietly as if he didn’t want to say the words out loud. “Our best and brightest, now our worst nightmare.”
“And we still have no idea where she is. No sign of her anywhere in seventy years. We’re all holding our breath, waiting for the bomb to drop. When it comes, I’m telling you: we won’t be ready.”
I wondered what in the world they were talking about. Before I lost sight of my team, I started moving again and came up to Katherine’s side. “Who are these people?” I whispered.
“They’re the other squads in our legion,” she said.
“Hey, you made it!” A commander jumped out from behind someone and snatched Katherine up into a bear hug. She laughed and held onto her hat as the man slowly put her back onto her feet. She seemed equally happy to see him as he was to see her.
Now that he was standing still, I recognized him from Katherine’s memory. It was her old teammate, Argo. The only thing different about him was his commander’s uniform. He wore a white shirt trimmed with black and teal.
“Of course I made it, the ceremony is for us,” Katherine said.
> “So, this is the team, huh?” He took a good look at everyone and nodded. “You’ve done well for yourself.” He patted Katherine’s shoulder. I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy. This guy couldn’t keep his hands off of her, and she didn’t seem to mind.
“Everyone, this is Argo,” Katherine said. The others introduced themselves, but I was quiet.
His gaze fell on me when I hadn’t said anything. “And you are?” He offered me his hand. It took all of my restraint to shake it and not crush it.
“Kaine,” I said through my teeth.
A mischievous glimmer filled his eyes. “Ah, I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said. I looked to Katherine for an explanation. But before she could say anything, Argo wrapped his arm around my shoulders and led me away from the others.
My face contorted. “Where are we going?”
“Oh, just to my office.” He snickered and let go of me now that we were out of Katherine’s sight. He folded his arms over his chest and glared at me. “I hear that you’ve shown quite a bit of interest in your commander. She told me that you wanted to be friends.” He sounded like a detective from an old black and white movie. “Is this true?”
“I-I, um.” I didn’t know if I was supposed to keep that a secret or not. “Is it a crime or something?”
“Of course not.” He clapped his hand a little harshly against my shoulder. “I just want to make sure you have her best interest at heart.”
Who did this guy think he was? Angry heat filled my cheeks. I was about to give him a piece of my mind when a woman approached us.
She wore a gray uniform. Her shirt had no sleeves and left her toned arms exposed. She wore a light gray headband with the symbol of medicine embroidered in red on the center. Her eyes were dreamy and exotic. She could’ve easily passed as an African princess.
“Leave him alone,” she said and put a hand on Argo’s arm. “Besides, he looks harmless.” She winked at me.
“You must be Juniper,” I said.
She nodded once. “I’ll take this rude man back where he belongs.” She walked away, tugging Argo behind her. Then she stopped and looked back. “Congratulations by the way.”