by Caleb Karger
A minute later I discovered the Betrayals weren’t retreating at all. A horde came running up the street. Their bows were now swords. They’d given up trying to fight us from a distance.
Spaz turned into an elephant. He stood up on his hind legs and trumpeted, then he charged. I broke the ring of fire to let him pass and quickly sealed it behind him. I watched as the Betrayals swarmed around him like an army of ants. Spaz’s tusks speared several through their legs. He shook his head, and they flew off of him like dust.
“Incoming on this side!” Wolf shouted. He kicked a fire hydrant over. A jet of water shot up thirty feet, sprinkling us with its chill. He created a huge wave and rode it with a surfboard made of ice towards the approaching enemy. The sound of rushing water was deafening.
The Betrayals were swept up into the wave. They struggled to stay above the water. Some Betrayals managed to avoid the big wave, and Katherine immediately blocked their path. Part of the street turned into a sinkhole, sending Betrayals tumbling into the abyss. A handful leaped onto buildings lining the street and ran across them horizontally. Katherine sent up cannonball sized rocks and squashed a few. Others were lifted high into the air by oversized vines, then dropped. Still, it wasn’t enough to stop all of them. They were closing in on both sides.
I’d been so distracted by watching the others; I didn’t realize I left myself wide open. Someone slammed into me from above. I was knocked to the ground. Their knees pinned my arms beside me. I heard a blade swinging for my head. I squirmed in alarm, but I couldn’t move. No, no, no! I thought.
A rock smacked into the Betrayal, and they fell over.
I rushed to my feet and caught a glimpse of my rescuer. Katherine glared at me with a pay-more-attention look. Before I could say anything, a man hollered and came towards me.
I ducked as he tried to slice my head off. I kicked his knee, and it broke with an awful crack, but it might as well have been a paper cut to him. His sword came at me again in a series of arcs and slices. He was a lot faster than I was. I had to keep stepping back to stay out of harm’s way.
I gathered the heat in my eyes and concentrated a beam of fire at his hands, cooking them down to the bone. Screaming, he dropped his sword and doubled over.
I raised my sword in an attempt to block another incoming Betrayal, but she ran past me like I was invisible. I noticed they all were going past me. I turned around to see that Katherine was getting surrounded. I was only able to tell it was her in the center of the mob from the boulders that were knocking Betrayals back.
Vines sprang out of the dirt and snatched a dozen enemy throats before sucking them down into the ground. Like a magnet, anything metal nearby was drawn towards Katherine. Cars, signs, and lights mowed down Betrayals. The objects stopped and hovered in midair as they reached Katherine. The metal twisted and rearranged rapidly into a shield that blocked twenty-some arrows. Then, the shield broke apart into spears and went tearing through more Betrayals’ bodies. Whoever was left behind met the deadly side of Katherine’s sword. I could only stare in amazement at the lethal force my commander had become.
Someone’s cry brought me out of my daze. Three Betrayals were cornering Lily. I pushed a wave of fire at their backs. The Betrayals howled and fell back as I ran towards Lily.
“You okay?!”
She nodded wearily. Getting surrounded had spooked her for a second. She gathered her strength and stood up tall. “I’m all right.”
“Gotta stick together—”
An icy body butted into me. The force shot me upwards, and my body vibrated from the speed. For a moment, I thought I’d gotten hit with a missile. We went higher and higher until I could no longer hear the sounds of my teammates.
The stars sprawled out before me and it seemed I could almost touch them. Without all of the light pollution, there were billions of them. I could even see the white rim of the galaxy.
Slowly, our speed got sucked away. I hovered in mid-air. Whoever grabbed me let go. I was weightless, floating like a cloud.
Then gravity pulled me towards the ground.
The wind blasted my back, and I went spinning through the air. My stomach jumped into my throat. My fingers and toes filled with the sensation of slipping and being unable to stop. My heart roared in my chest as dread overtook me. The skyscrapers reached out like hands to grab me. I went for the one closest to me.
It was a poor choice. The building had a curved roof. I made a large dent upon impact and then went sliding over the curve. My hands squealed against the smooth surface as I struggled to stop myself. It was the world’s worst slide. My feet poked over the edge, and there was only a straight drop below. I kicked away from the building and sent myself whizzing towards another rooftop.
WHAM!
Pain lit up in my shoulder as I hit the roof, but it wasn’t enough to stop me. I rolled uncontrollably until I smacked into the ledge. I groaned and twitched. The rocks on the rooftop were dug deep into my side. I tried to brush them off, but they were wedged in. I hissed as I plucked them from my flesh. My arm looked like the moon with all of its craters.
Someone landed on the other end of the rooftop. The air was already chilly from being up so high; now the temperature seemed to dive even further. I shivered and sat up. Whoever it was, came closer; outlined by silver moonlight. I saw her blonde hair and that ugly mask.
I realized that I was all alone. I’d done exactly what Katherine said not to do. She was far away and preoccupied with all of the others. She probably didn’t even know where I was. There was no escaping to safety; my back pressed against the ledge.
The Betrayal walked towards me as if she had all the time in the world. “So, what’s it going to be? You heard what your father said. I see it in your eyes…you don’t fully buy into the way the ninja handle things.”
I held my sword up. I muffled a groan. With my injured shoulder, the sword weighed a ton. “Don’t come any closer,” I said. Honestly, I felt like I was holding a sword up to the Grim Reaper and telling him to stay back.
She stopped and held her hands up like she meant me no harm. “We’ve been preparing a place for you since you were a child. The ninja aren’t the only ones who can give you what you desire most. You will be high ranking among us, admired and respected.”
I shook my head. “I don’t care about having power.”
“Oh, you will…you will when they won’t listen to you,” she said. Her voice was like the wind in a blizzard. The longer she spoke, the more it hurt because it rose to such high pitches at times. “They didn’t want you. You’re the son of a Betrayal, and they won’t forget it. They’ll make sure you never advance, never have a voice, and remain in a place where you can only take orders—no questions asked. What happens when the storms start rolling in, and people begin to die? There’s no doubt that you’ll go against your orders, and once that happens, you’ll be banished, powerless. Don’t you see? It’s inevitable. You will join us.”
I winced at all of the pain flaring up from my side. “Gotta love how you accuse the ninja of being evil; have you looked at the things you’ve done? You were just killing innocent people in the streets, you burned down hundreds of camps trying to find me, you kidnapped my sister to get me to follow you, and don’t forget what you guys did to my commander’s family. You’re just as bad, if not worse. There’s no point in joining you,” I said.
“At least we don’t pretend to be perfect, righteous heroes. We admit our darkness, we let the world see it. We’re open about everything we do. Can the ninja say the same?”
I didn’t have a good comeback for that. The secrets the U.S government kept from its citizens were child’s play compared to the ninja. Sure, it made sense that they would try to control the child of a traitor. Who wouldn’t? But they made an exception. They believed I could do more good with them than harm. Even if I didn’t trust my superiors, I trusted Katherine and my teammates. I didn’t want to end up fighting against them.
“I’m not going
to be their pawn, and I’m not going to be yours, either. They won’t forget that my dad was a Betrayal, but they haven’t forgotten that my grandpa was a master, either,” I said and looked down at my old, beaten weapon. “This is his sword, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is, Enki gave it to you because he wants you to be just like Pyralis!”
“And you expect me to be like my dad, but the thing is…I didn’t know them. I can only be me, and I choose to find my own way,” I said.
Her shoulders fell. “So, that’s it then? There’s no convincing you to leave them? You’re absolutely committed?” she asked. I swallowed and nodded resolutely. Her hands shook and curled into fists. “Then that makes us enemies.” She took the bow off of her torso, and it transformed into her swords. “And I’ve sworn to kill all of my enemies.” She took a fighting stance. “You can attempt to fight me if you prefer to die that way. It doesn’t matter. You’re all alone, and your commander can’t save you now.”
I knew this was coming. I just hoped I’d talked long enough for some of my pain to subside, but I was frozen in place—too scared to move. Was I ready to take on an enemy as skilled as her? I didn’t have a choice.
Trembling, I got to my feet. It wasn’t going to be enough to merely survive her attacks; I was going to have to win. I thought about my family, my teammates, green chili burritos, and all of the other things I had to live for. Surely, I had more to live for than she did.
I growled and charged. She ran to me, and we met in the middle of the roof. Both of her swords came down towards my head. I raised my sword to block. The blades rang as they came together and sparks rained down on us. My arms nearly gave out underneath the force of her strike. The shock of the impact made my hands cry in agony. She was strong.
She tried to knock my sword aside. It took all my grip strength to hold onto it, but my torso was left wide open. I stumbled backward as I felt a searing pain across my chest. I looked down to see a nasty wound. I needed to be more careful.
She tried to cut me again. I threw my body towards the ground then rolled back onto my feet. I’d been up for all of one millisecond, and already she was on the attack again. I struggled to keep up with both swords. Each one swung at me at least two hundred miles per hour. It was like trying to block speeding bullets. My arms burned with the strain.
Get back! Get back! I thought. Her swords turned into two spinning fans of death. There was no way I could strike or block them. I felt the back of my leg hit the wall guarding the edge of the rooftop. I wobbled and almost fell over. I chanced a look down and spotted another building below. I got onto the ledge and blasted myself backward, flipping through the air.
I landed on the next rooftop. I stabbed at the air, a cloud of boiling flames shot outward. The night lit up. A wave of heat struck me, but I kept the flames burning intensely for a long time. I hoped that if the Betrayal tried to jump down to me, she’d get burnt to a crisp. Instead, I had just exhausted myself. She slipped right through the fire, completely unaffected.
She tackled me, and we went tumbling across the rooftop. The instant we came to a stop her hand snatched my throat. It wasn’t like Katherine grabbing my throat during my final test. She’d been holding back I realized now, and the Betrayal wasn’t. She squeezed my neck down to the size of a straw. Blood gushed up my throat and exploded into my mask.
My free hand thrashed wildly, trying to grab any part of her I could. I clawed at her side, but her body was hard as stone. My head was getting light, and my vision was fading. My lungs were shriveling up into nothing without air. My feet were shaking with fright.
Finally, powerful streams of fire exploded from my eyes, and threw her back. I gasped for air and panicked when only a trace amount reached my lungs. I winced from the terrible pain that blindsided me every time I took a breath. I staggered to my feet.
The ground shook, the building we stood on groaned and buckled. I looked around to see fights littered across every nearby rooftop. More ninja had come, but so had more Betrayals. I had no idea where my teammates were.
I tore up an air conditioning duct and threw it at the Betrayal. I was trying to buy a few seconds to recover. My head thundered from the lack of air. The pain in my throat throbbed. The world was spinning. Waves of nausea hit me, and I fought to stay upright.
I looked up in time to see the Betrayal coming at me. I could hardly block her assaults. I heard someone having an asthma attack but soon realized I was the one wheezing. I couldn’t focus. I desperately needed a minute to rest. I needed a deep breath.
She could see I was having a hard time and her attacks became more ferocious. Her swings kept getting stronger and faster. I was afraid my sword would snap in half. My arms felt heavy and tired from struggling to keep her at bay. I was reduced to merely running out of her way and hiding behind anything I could find.
My rage intensified at how cowardly I was acting. I wanted her to be on the defense. I wanted her to be hiding from me. What had I put all that effort into training for if I was just going to run and hide? Was I going to let a little pain stop me? So what if I couldn’t breathe! Suck it up! I heard Katherine’s voice ring in my head.
The Betrayal ripped through the water tower I’d been crouching behind. I was ready for her. I sent a wall of fire her way. I jumped through it and swung my sword with wild abandon. She’d only been blinded by the light for a moment, but it was enough to make her step back.
I summoned all of the strength I had and batted my sword against hers. With each strike, sparks flew in every direction like fireworks. When she tried to use her speed to get around me, I sent fire at her face.
Frustrated, she jumped to another rooftop. I went after her. Her swords melded together to form her bow. She shot an arrow at me. I couldn’t get out of the way in mid-air. The arrow struck my chest.
Since it looked like lightning, I expected to feel a zap, but I didn’t. I felt hollow and empty inside until a winter storm filled the void. Snow flurries replaced my stomach. Icicles replaced my heart. It felt like an arctic gale was blowing through my veins. The heat got sucked out of me. The flames on my sword died. The heat in my chest dissolved.
I flopped onto the next rooftop lifelessly. I shivered and wrapped my arms around me. I lay helpless as the cold seeped deep into my muscles. My cells were freezing. My shivering slowly stopped. I heard the crackling sound of ice growing over my skin. My body became rigid and locked in place. I was a human ice cube.
The world drifted away. I fell into a black, bottomless pit. It was so cold. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know where I was. All I knew was the subzero temperature. For an eternity, I lay trapped in it. There was no hope for escape.
So cold…freezing…painful. If only there were something to make it stop. What could make it stop? I thought. My head hurt. The more I tried to think and remember, the more I got a brain freeze. My mind cramped and ached, but I had the answer on the tip of my fingers. If only I could just grab it. Suddenly I had it! Warmth! Heat!
The strangest thing happened as I tried to remember anything that would generate heat. I didn’t think of fire. I didn’t think of hot soup, not the sun, not volcanos, nor a desert. The first thing that popped into my head was a girl, a beautiful girl with unforgettable eyes and a bright smile. The memory of her laugh echoed around the emptiness. It broke up the cold and the darkness. The thought of her shattered the ice in my chest. My heart once more became a furnace. Heat and fire pumped through my veins.
The ice on my body began to melt. I could open my eyes again. With every beat, I grew stronger. My wet clothes sizzled as I got to my feet.
“I’m impressed,” the Betrayal said. “Not many can regain control that fast.”
“It’s going to take a little more than ice to bring me down.” I tried to say in a tough voice, but I sounded weary.
“Oh, I’d be happy to oblige.”
My shoulders slumped. I had a feeling that I was going to regret challenging her.
She moved so fast that she seemed to disappear and reappear an inch in front of me. Her foot slammed into my stomach. I went soaring backward faster than warp speed. I ripped through a building. My back got shredded as I broke through windows, slid across coarse office carpet, snapped steel beams, and obliterated a brick wall. Nothing seemed to be able to slow me down. I zipped through building after building, leaving a trail of wreckage behind me. Finally, I slapped against a cement wall and slid down.
I landed on one of the many balconies of a high-rise apartment building. I heard a dog barking through a sliding glass door. I didn’t dare try to move. So many body parts were twisted and possibly broken. If I could see my skin, I was sure it would’ve been black. Glass shards were poking out of several places. I panted in anguish.
I heard a whistling noise tearing through the open air. I looked up and saw a line of arrows flying towards me. A burst of adrenaline hit my veins. I threw myself into the glass door and hid behind a couch inside. Whatever the arrows hit, froze. The barking dog became an ice statue.
The Betrayal landed in the living room. She overturned the furniture as she looked for me. I crawled further into the darkness hoping it would hide me. Every movement sent stinging pain all through my body. I bit my lip and fought my desire to shout.
She spotted me crawling down the hallway and snatched my ankle. I tried to stab at her, and she deflected my sword effortlessly. She held me upside down, and the blood rushed to my head. Her foot rammed into my nose. It felt like huge needles jamming into my nasal cavity.
The kick sent me crashing into the kitchen cabinets. They busted into a million splinters, some joining the glass already embedded into my sides. I struggled to pull out what I could as I slumped onto the counter. The Betrayal grabbed my face, putting pressure on my broken nose. She bashed my head against the wall until I could see into the next room. Her fists pounded my stomach. At first, it sounded like she was hitting a sack of sand and then it sounded like she was hitting wet sponges.